All The World's A Toybox
by Straightjacketed
Summary: The movement to take back the Falls goes horribly wrong, and everyone has to suffer for it. And as Weirdmageddon spreads beyond Gravity Falls, Dipper, Mabel and a few other unfortunates have to face up to the awful reality of spending the rest of their lives as pawns in Bill Cipher's newest games.
1. Bid Farewell To Reality

A/N: Hello and welcome to my very first __Gravity Falls__ fanfic, ladies and gentlemen. I've only recently been introduced to the series and have enjoyed every bit of from beginning to end... and naturally, being extremely morbid, I had to start dreaming up a worst-case scenario. I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to leave detailed reviews - not to mention critiques of those dreadful typos that creep in at 4 in the morning! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: __Gravity Falls__ is not mine, folks; it remains the property of Alex Hirsch, Disney, etc, etc, etc.

Also, this story may get... quite dark. Trust me, good people, trust me.

* * *

 _ _What just happened?__

Stan could only blink in confusion, trying to figure out what had just changed, but no matter how carefully he surveyed the scene, he couldn't tell what was amiss: as far as he could tell, he was still in the Fearamid, staring down Bill Cipher and gearing up for the most desperate gambit of his long and far-too-colourful career.

But as he blinked, he found himself seeing the world in – for lack of a better word – splitscreen: one half of his vision was seen through his own eyes, cataracts and all, and the other half was captured from about ten feet away from him, almost like an out-of-body experience. And in both halves, time seemed to have stopped and left the world around him frozen in a ghastly tableau, every single angle and participant visible from his third-person viewpoint.

Bill was extending a hand in anticipation of the inevitable deal, his crooked fingers ablaze with electric-blue flames, his eye agape with excitement. Stan, dressed in Ford's battered trenchoat and gloves, was reaching out to accept the bargain that would spell the end of everything – or so Bill thought. Ford knelt behind him, perfectly disguised and waiting with the memory gun at the ready, while Dipper and Mabel remained slumped on the floor where Bill had discarded them, both staring in horror.

And then, just as Stan was wondering how long this was going to last, his vision suddenly returned to normal and time started moving again… and in that moment, Bill very slowly withdrew his hand, the flames immediately extinguished. Stan wasn't exactly an expert on reading triangular faces, but he knew a suspicious expression when he saw it… and more importantly, after thirty years of successful and not-so-successful grifting, he knew that the mark of this particular con wasn't fooled.

"Gloves off, Sixer," said Bill, quietly.

Suddenly, all the mocking laughter and triumphant glee was gone from his voice; suddenly, his voice was as cold and unyielding as iron. In fact, the tone was so utterly alien to the demented yellow triangle that it actually took a moment for Stan to recognize what Bill had actually said.

"What?" he muttered, barely remembering to imitate Ford.

"You heard me: get those gloves off so we can shake hands like __people,__ flesh to flesh."

 _ _Uh-oh.__

"Is this-"

"I'm not playing around, __Fordsie.__ Gloves off or no deal, and believe me you won't like what'll happen after that."

Stan's eyes flickered nervously around the room, instinctively scanning the surrounding area for anything he could use to his advantage – distractions, weapons, escape routes, __anything.__ It was a habit he'd picked up from his wandering conman days before Gravity Falls, and it was completely useless now, in no small part because there was absolutely nothing of use within reach, nor were there any exits in sight. All that could be seen were basalt bricks, crimson stained-glass, and the three spectators to this little screw up: Dipper and Mabel, still watching the disaster with a mixture of horror and confusion; Ford, his face a mask of dread and despair… and judging from those ominous shapes behind the window, there were other spectators looking on, the kind that Stan really didn't feel like meeting in person.

"Now look-"

"I won't ask again, Stanford. Take the gloves off…"

Without warning, Bill was hovering right in front of him, suddenly twenty feet tall and scarlet with rage, the air around him crackling with eldritch energies, his eye a lightless void.

" ** **NOW,"**** he boomed.

Stan took a deep breath and played the only card he had left in the deck: reaching down to Ford's right glove – taking great pains to disguise the fact that the sixth finger was empty – he slowly began to peel it away. Then, just as he was about to remove it, he slowly and very deliberately stopped in mid-yank; for several painful seconds, he stood there, faux-struggling with the glove, before trying the other one.

"Darn," he said at last, layering his voice with all the false dismay he could muster. "They're stuck. Torturing me might not have been such a good idea, Cipher. Looks like you'll have to settle for a gloved handshake or nothing."

That'd work, wouldn't it? There was a grain of truth there, at least, the mark of all the best cons: God only knew Ford had been having trouble getting the gloves off when they'd switched places, what with all the blood that had seeped into them; they'd actually had to wash the cuts on his arms with the hip-flask so Ford's bloodstains wouldn't give them away. And thanks to all that blood, the gloves had been extremely sticky and uncomfortable, too, so maybe there'd be just enough truth for the oversized Dorito to believe them.

Bill's eye narrowed. "Nice try," he sneered.

And before Stan could react, one spindly arm shot upwards, its fingers suddenly aglow with magical power; there was an eye-scalding flash of light, and then-

Having gone to prison far too many times for his own good, Stan knew all too well what it was like to get shanked. All things considered, it was remarkably subtle unless the stabber was in a bad mood and __really__ wanted the stabbee to feel it: he'd been careful to stay within sight of the guards during his time on the inside, forcing his attackers to make do with a quick jab to the stomach as they ran past him, so it felt more like getting punched in the guts than anything life-threatening… up until he'd tried to walk, and those first few inklings of serious pain began sinking in. Then came the blood, the "oh my god I'm gonna die," the agony, the medics, and a very long and terrifying stint in the prison infirmary.

So, as the flash burned its way across his retinas, he felt something heavy slam into him at high speed – as if someone had hit him in the chest with a brick – and Stan knew at once that he was in serious trouble. At first, he couldn't tell exactly how bad the damage was, for he seemed to be having trouble looking down all of a sudden. Then, he caught the smell of roasting meat wafting from somewhere just around sternum level, and felt the warm blood gently soaking his shirt.

" _ _STANLEY!"__ Ford screamed. "Oh God! Oh God, __no!"__

Somewhere behind Bill, horror-stricken shouts of " _ _Grunkle Ford!"__ joined the chorus.

He wanted to tell them that he was okay. He wanted to turn around and explain to Stanford that he felt fine – he couldn't feel a thing, really – but his body didn't seem in the mood to respond. At first, he thought Bill had petrified him, but that wouldn't explain the blood or the smell of cooked flesh. It wasn't until he noticed the distinct lack of sensation in his slowly buckling legs that he finally realized the truth: whatever Bill had hit him with, it had burned clean through his spine. And probably a lot of organs as well.

Slowly but surely, Stan wobbled, tottered and finally toppled like a felled tree. There was pain now, but distant and vague, echoing from what felt like a thousand miles away. Nearer were the sounds of panic from around him, muffled slightly by Bill's distinctive nasally laughter – louder and more obnoxious than ever.

Looking up, he saw Ford was already kneeling over him, frantically rifling through the pockets of the trenchcoat for medical supplies, desperately pleading with Stan to stay awake. Somewhere nearby, Mabel was crying, and judging by the sounds, so was Dipper. But everything was fading, everything was slowly drifting away – leaving Stan to watch with sleepy detachment as Ford desperately slapped him across the face, trying to keep him conscious and not having much success by the looks of things. The numbness was spreading, and the further it spread, the less real the world around him seemed – not that the world had seemed particularly real for the last few days. One thing was certain, though: he was dying. Oh yes, all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't help him now.

"Stanley, look at me – don't pass out, don't pass out, don't pass out, __please__ don't pass out. Please, stay with me… oh god, Stanley, I'm so sorry, it should have been me…"

 _ _Wow,__ Stan mused silently. __It's been a long time since I heard you crying, Ford. Things must be serious. No need to worry, though… I've never felt better. It's okay… my own fault… should have guessed I'd never be able to fool him…__

Meanwhile, Bill was still cackling triumphantly. "He'll be dead soon, Fordsie, and so will these kids if you don't give me that equation. Aw, why the long face? You know how powerful I am; life and death are so reversible at this point that the two terms are practically meaningless! Maybe I'll just bring him back if you're on your best behaviour from now on… or I could peel off your niece's skin and braid it into a noose for the little Shooting Star to dangle from. What do you think would kill her first? Shock? Infection? Strangulation? Or maybe-"

"Stop it!"

"Or maybe I could see how much Pine Tree likes playing the puppet again: human ligaments are just like puppet strings when you think about it, and once you've torn 'em right out of the limbs, you'd be amazed at the hours of fun you can get out of making them dance… well, assuming the puppet doesn't bleed to death first. Oops – spoiler alert!" He giggled hysterically. "Oh I'm going to have so much fun testing the limits of human agony!"

This time, Ford clearly couldn't even bring himself to speak. The expression on his face was beyond despairing: it was __trapped.__

"Last chance, Fordsie: let me into your mind, or you'll get to find out just how much suffering the human psyche can take before it snaps."

There was a dreadful pause, and then Stanford Pines got to his feet and began the long, slow march towards the waiting figure of Bill Cipher. Out of the corner of his eye, Stan saw Bill's hand once again erupt into searing blue flames, and without saying a word, Ford reached out with all the enthusiasm of a corpse and shook the offered hand.

The last thing Stan heard before he lost consciousness was the sound of Bill Cipher's unearthly, high-pitched laughter as he tore into Ford's helpless mind.

 _ _Damn,__ he thought sadly, as the void claimed him. __I should have known I'd screw this up as well…__

* * *

Half an hour after the deal was made, the barrier containing the unreality of Gravity Falls burst with an explosion loud enough to be heard in California.

Speculation immediately spiralled out of control as people tried to guess at the source of the noise, some claiming a nuclear bomb in the wrong hands, some pointing to increased volcanic activity somewhere to the north. As the minutes dragged by, the theorizing spread across the Internet, until even the official news sources began chiming in with initial reports. By the time the thirty-eighth minute had lapsed, the Department of Defence had begun its own investigation, and was already demanding answers from a series of perpetually-frazzled technicians, insisting that they locate the source of the explosion ASAP.

None of them ever got a chance.

Forty minutes after the initial blast, the first pulse of Rampant Weirdness rippled out across the world. Innocent bystanders caught in the path of the shockwave had just enough time to look up and see the tidal wave of chaotic energies flowing towards them before it passed clean through them. Commuters caught in traffic jams, people walking their dogs, children on their way to school, tourists wandering the streets, office workers returning home from work – even the soundest of sleepers found themselves awakening just in time to experience the marvel and the monstrosity: all saw, heard and felt the Weirdness Wave as it permeated their tissues and altered the world around them.

The effects were infinitely variable. In some cases, it only affected inanimate objects: cars grew fangs and tried to eat pedestrians (or their drivers); dumpsters sprouted legs and took to the streets as giant garbage-eating crustaceans; streetlights became steel tentacles as malleable as muscle, snatching up unsuspecting passers-by and crushing them to pulp; books erupted into living blizzards of razor-sharp pages at the slightest provocation; statues stepped down from their plinths and sought out local pigeons with vengeance in mind, killing or maiming anyone unfortunate enough to get in the way; brewers fled in terror as the contents of their vats walked the earth on oozing, viscous feet, demanding to be consumed immediately in deep, bubbling voices.

And in other cases, the effects were centred on people: moviegoers in theatres throughout Portland found themselves unable to leave their seats, scream for help, or locate their limbs; later investigators had difficulty locating them, until they looked closely at the seating upholstery and noticed the terrified eyes staring back at them. Elsewhere, fleeing civilians abruptly dissolved into flocks of birds in mid run, their vacant clothing slumping to the ground as their occupants flew away; other unfortunates all but exploded out of their clothes as they slowly transformed into giant slugs, their limbs fusing and merging into their bulging flanks, their bodies swelling and bloating into colossal mounds of blubber the size of trucks. Pedestrians found themselves reduced to detailed graffiti murals on walls, their spray-painted mouths opening wide in silent horror as they realized what had become of them. And some motorists, penned in on all sides by carnivorous cars and animated semi-trailers, found themselves slowly being absorbed into the engines of their own cars – to awaken minutes later as the animating force behind a whole new series of living automobiles; for some reason, this effect appeared most common in Detroit.

Less-coherent transformations followed: across the world, hundreds of people abruptly turned inside-out and somehow survived – though left blind, deaf and in indescribable pain. People handling electrical equipment simply disintegrated into writhing tongues of living lightning, doomed to seek out copper and conductivity for the rest of their lives. Unsuspecting kindergarteners aged dramatically into barely-animated husks, somehow still alive despite being over a thousand years old on average; conversely, nursing homes across the western hemisphere were suddenly populated entirely by children. As if to make sure none of the rejuvenated residents could enjoy their newfound youth, every single one of them was lumbered with a private entourage of bogeymen, things from under the bed and other childish night terrors made flesh. And from Oregon to Okinawa, anyone unlucky enough to be wearing camouflage clothes found themselves growing less and less visible, until they literally faded into the background and melded seamlessly with the surrounding environment.

And then came the weather of the new world: crimson stormclouds, hailstones of polished bone, rains of blood and other less-identifiable fluids, random gravity inversions, wandering swarms of eyesocket-infesting locusts, and the much-beloved bubbles of madness. The dimensional rift over Gravity Falls grew until it encompassed most of North America, allowing a fresh horde of monsters loyal to Bill into the withering world. Global time stopped, water flowed uphill, fire burned cold enough to freeze water, life and death became indistinguishable abstracts, and reality itself began to fray and tear.

Soon, eye-bats patrolled the blood-red skies over every major city on Earth, and monsters of one kind or another stalked the streets in search of prey. The police and military did their best to keep the abominations at bay, but they were outmanned and outgunned, all-too-easily converted into the very monsters they were trying to stop; within an hour of the barrier's collapse, armed forces throughout the world were in full retreat.

Desperate for any solution, no matter how suicidal, world leaders quickly resorted to their nuclear arsenals, hammering afflicted areas with every tactical and strategic weapon available to them – regardless of civilian casualties. After perhaps an hour spent watching entire cities vanish in the ensuing nuclear holocaust, both the President of the United States and the President of the Russian Federation gave their joint authorization for a major strike at the heart of the Rift, hoping that it would somehow be enough to end the madness before it got any worse.

Instead, the Rift simply swallowed the nukes and spewed a deluge of fallout over the already-devastated planet, burying the Pentagon in radioactive sputum and hammering Moscow with a barrage of molten steel meteorites. Moments later, the eye-bats descended on Air Force One, petrifying the flight crew and leaving 8 Ball free to peel open the plane's fuselage and devour the passengers; elsewhere, Teeth and Amorphous Shape made a beeline for the Kremlin, blithely flattening most of Southern Russia in the process.

Finally, Bill Cipher himself appeared over the Atlantic Ocean, casually swatting ICBMs out of the air like errant flies. Pausing only to casually obliterate the various fleets who'd made the mistake of opening fire on him, he grew as tall as he could possibly manage without accidentally crushing the planet, and – just as he'd promised Ford – scrawled a colossal happy face along the length of the Midwestern United States with one monolithic finger.

As if for an encore, he then took a massive bite out of the northern hemisphere, effectively erasing the entire Arctic Circle and leaving a crater deep enough to expose the molten core of the planet.

With almost a quarter of the planet suddenly missing and every single military force on Earth left impotent in the face of the reality-warping carnage, surviving world leaders offered their unconditional surrender to the entity now dominating the skies, hoping to at prevent any further casualties.

Bill ignored them.

Instead, he returned to normal size and took the Fearamid on a tour of the world's ruined cities, demanding immediate worship from every nation he visited: those who obeyed were promptly sentenced to a lifetime of torture; those who refused were killed – and then brought back to life so that they could tearfully recant and accept a life of torture under the reign of their new lord and master.

Along the way, Bill also incorporated the ruins of many a fallen capital into the Fearamid: from London to Beijing, from Washington to Moscow, the facades of hundreds upon thousands of famous buildings were assimilated into the bulk of the fortress in a tasteless mishmash of styles and cultures united under the distinctive obsidian pyramid, Buckingham Palace rubbing elbows with the Kremlin, the White House squashed into place next to the Great Hall of the People. To round out the journey, he took his newly-renovated stronghold on a joyride through Giza, disassembling the Pyramids into fresh building material and stealing the Sphinx for good measure – later using it as a doorstopper for the Fearamid's newly-forged gates.

Then, as the first pulses of Weirdness began rippling out into space, the undisputed master of Earth sat back on a throne of ossified corpses and relaxed in triumph.

Weirdmageddon had gone global, and Bill Cipher reigned supreme.

* * *

If Bill was ever to acknowledge any of his personal flaws (unlikely verging on impossible), the one negative trait he'd confess to would be this: he got bored __very__ easily.

Once things had settled down and the planets of the solar system began dissolving into scrambled eggs and silly putty, the Henchmaniacs were forced to wait while the Weirdness Waves pulsed slowly but deftly towards the next populated star systems; with new conquests delayed and the few pockets of Earthly resistance thoroughly suppressed, Bill began looking for entertainment among the nations he'd already conquered and found it among his prisoners from Gravity Falls.

On reflection, he found that rounding up the townsfolk for another throne of petrified human torment was remarkably dull now that he had much more prestigious materials to work with – presidents, prime ministers and other world leaders, for example. Likewise, leaving the Zodiac as banners and other decorations just didn't satisfy: nobody outside Gravity Falls knew who they were, and in hindsight, Bill didn't feel like memorializing just how close they'd gotten to ending Weirdmageddon. So, he returned them to normal and scattered their unconscious bodies across the ruined Earth, keeping them permanently separated so that they would never have a chance to form the Wheel again.

Torturing them or the other resistance leaders in the usual ways just wasn't all that fun anymore, sadly: he'd glutted himself on commonplace violence and brutality in the first few days of Weirdmageddon, and his accustomed methods just didn't have the same thrill as they did back then. Making Gideon dance barefoot on a floor of bullet ants was a welcome upgrade of his earlier punishment, but after a while, his agonized screams faded into bland white noise. Watching Robbie chasing his own heart down an endless flight of stairs was funny in a rather poetic way, especially when the heart sprouted legs and wriggled out of his hands before he could put it back, but the whole thing stopped being interesting once the boy realized the wound wouldn't kill him. Baiting Toby Determined with a lifelike replica of Shandra Jiminez on the end of a fishing rod was just plain sad. And what the hell could he possibly torture Tad Strange with, anyway?

No, simple torture would not suffice: something more in-depth was called for. If these humans were to be his playthings, then he'd have to make a proper game out of them – a lot of games, perhaps, tailor-made for choice… and he'd have to wring every last drop of suffering from their psyches, nice and excruciatingly slow.

And if it didn't work out…

So?

He had an entire planet of playthings to work with – and soon, much, much more.

 _ _So, let the games begin…__

* * *

 _ _A/N:__ Coming up next, Dipper's Game!


	2. A Most Unhappy Birthday

A/N: Second chapter! Thanks to all who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed - I'll try to be prompt in posting, especially now that I've revised the intended chapter structure a bit. I _was_ going to have every single event from each character's game squeezed into a single chapter, but in hindsight I realized it would take up too much space. Now I'm going to see if I can give events some space to breathe. Constructive criticism is always welcome, particularly nice long reviews - good for the ego and for getting my heart started in the mornings.

Oh, and Kraven The Hunter? The line "dark as a panther eating licorice in a coal mine" might be one of the best sentences I've ever read in a review. Thanks again.

So, without further ado, the latest chapter! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine. It'd just float out of my hands...

* * *

"RISE AND SHINE, PINE TREE!"

Dipper sat bolt upright and immediately regretted it: the low ceiling dealt him a stunning blow to the forehead, leaving him to sink back to the mattress, groaning pathetically as fresh waves of pain rippled across his skull. But as he lay there, imagining the spectacular bruise that was already beginning to form, questions began occurring to him – the kind that only needed to be asked if he'd been woken up after less than three hours of sleep.

 _Where am I?_

A quick glance around him revealed that he was currently lying in a narrow stone alcove just big enough to accommodate him and the withered mattress he'd been provided with. As far as he could tell, this tiny niche was completely enclosed by the surrounding walls, making it look and feel far too much like a coffin for Dipper's liking… except most coffins actually came equipped with a cushion, or so Robbie had claimed. And most coffins didn't have a tiny window sitting just behind the occupant's head, either. Rolling onto his stomach and peering out through the tiny glass slot in the wall, he could quite clearly see the outside world – a nightmarish collage of blasted hillsides, skeletal forests, and oceans of burning gasoline languishing under a sky as red as blood and a sun as black as sackcloth, a hellscape broken only by the charred remnants of cities now oozing and stretching beyond recognition as reality slowly decayed around them.

He was still in the Fearamid. Even if he hadn't seen that distinctive shadow drifting across the hills below, there was no mistaking the walls of his enclosure – those rough-hewn bricks of pitch-black stone and the unearthly crimson mortar that supported them. And then he remembered: this cramped little nook was his prison cell, and had been ever since Bill's final victory.

 _Okay, fair enough. How long have I been here?_

That was a little harder to gauge: even if time hadn't been tied in a knot and thrown into a briar batch, Dipper had long since lost his grip on what little sense of real time existed. He recalled the events that followed Bill's escape from Gravity Falls, but he couldn't tell how long it had been since the first surrender had been offered. He remembered being forced to watch the chaos that had brought human civilization to its knees – Bill had taken great delight in showing them how New York City shattered like glass, a hundred billion glittering shards floating aimlessly into the void, ten million vitrified people cracking and falling apart as they'd looked on in horror – but he could only guess at the hours, days, weeks, months or years that had passed since then.

 _Where are the others?_

Not for the first time, Dipper wished he could forget what he'd seen: he'd have given anything in the world to have the Memory Gun in his hand right now, just so he could sweep everything he'd seen in the throne room out of his mind. But no, the memory of the family's last few moments together was still there and wasn't leaving anytime soon: Grunkle Stan slumped on the floor, covered in blood and seconds from death; Grunkle Ford sitting beside him, almost catatonic with grief, his tear-streaked expression lifeless and defeated; and Mabel, frozen in the act of reaching for Dipper's hand even as the Henchmaniacs dragged them apart. She'd been crying, too, but that look on her face hadn't been of grief or sorrow, but guilt – he'd know that expression at a glance. But he hadn't had a chance to consider why; before he'd had time to think, the four of them were being dragged away to their cells, Bill pausing only to wave a hand over Grunkle Stan's body before having him carted away on a hovering stretcher.

 _Is he alive? Could Bill have saved him after all? What about Grunkle Ford? What about Mabel? I have to find them, and fast, before-_

"I said, **WAKE UP!"**

Dipper had barely enough time to register the sound of Bill's voice before the ground beneath him gave a tremendous lurch, jolting him off the bed and into another collision course with the ceiling as the entire cell tilted upwards. As the floor became a wall and the window became a skylight, Dipper slid helplessly down the length of the now-vertical prison cell, crashing through a suddenly-open hatchway and tumbling out onto the glacial flagstones of the Fearamid proper. He landed heavily, head smarting from the impact with the roof, all the breath knocked out of him; for a moment he could only lie there, shivering, as the all-pervasive chill of the floor wrapped itself around him and refused to let go.

Then, an all-too-familiar shadow fell over him, and the bottom dropped out of Dipper's stomach.

"Wakey-wakey, Pine Tree!" Bill thundered from on high. "On your feet, now, up and at 'em! Don't wanna miss the start of your first day, do ya, kiddo?"

"First day of _what?"_ groaned Dipper, once he'd managed to claw his way upright.

"Your first day as part of a brand new reality, of course! You've been cooped up in your cell for far too long, kid: it's time you stretched those noodly little limbs of yours and had a look around the block, checked out the new neighbourhood. Besides, I don't think you've gotten to know the Henchmaniacs yet, not with all the time you wasted on worrying about people you'll never see again. So, whaddaya say, Pine Tree? Up for a chinwag with the lesser powers-that-be in the throne room?"

Dipper sighed wearily, grappling with the urge to scream obscenities and throw a defiant punch at the crazed nacho's eyeball. He'd made the mistake of getting snippy with Bill a few hours after Weirdmageddon had gone global, and the punishment had left him a convulsing wreck for the rest of the day – even if only _half_ the spiders had bitten him. But in spite of everything he'd already endured, he couldn't just roll over and let Bill do whatever he liked.

So he instead opted for sarcasm, at last remarking, "Do I have a choice?" in the driest, most exasperated tone of voice he could possibly manage.

Bill flung a faux-comradely arm around Dipper's shoulders, daggerlike fingers immediately digging painfully into his forearm. "Of _course_ you have a choice," he said cheerily. "You've got a choice of how to say yes. My advice – let _me_ do it for you!"

Without warning, Bill's hand shot out and fastened over Dipper's lower jaw – and abruptly yanked something away. Dipper instinctively reached up to inspect his face for wounds, only to find bare skin where his lips had once been: Bill was holding Dipper's mouth in one hand like a glove puppet, flapping the lips and pumping the vocal cords in a ghastly parody of human speech.

"Yes, Bill!" said the disembodied mouth. "You know I'd do anything in the world to make you happy! You can do anything you like with me, because I'm your plaything now and forever!"

"Oh, I like the way you think, Pine Tree! And just because you've been such a good sport, I think I might just give you your present right now!"

Suddenly, Dipper's mouth was back on his face, his vocal cords aching from the puppetry Bill had subjected them to. "Present?" he echoed suspiciously.

Bill laughed even harder than usual, his nasally borderline-hysterical laughter echoing up and down the misshapen cell block. "It's your birthday, kid!" he cackled. "Lucky number thirteen, remember? There's a party for you in the throne room, and all the Henchmaniacs are invited!"

 _Then it's only been a few days,_ Dipper realized. _All this time, I thought it had to be at least a month or two, and it's only been a few days since Bill won? And… it's my birthday? Mabel and I are thirteen now? And here I was thinking there'd never be birthdays for anyone ever again. Knowing Bill, he's only throwing this particular party just to make me suffer… but what about Mabel? Is she going to be there? If this birthday bash is going to be as bad as I think it will be, then what's Bill going to do to her? Do I even want to know? Oh god, this is so much worse than I thought it could ever be, and after everything I did to screw up Mabel's birthday preparations…_

"Where's Mabel?" he asked, suddenly frantic. "Is she-"

"Not attending the party," Bill snapped, his eye narrowing in sudden anger. "She's got her own birthday party to attend. Besides," he continued, suddenly bright and obnoxiously cheerful again, "I don't think she'd have much fun at this particular shindig. After all, this one's _all_ for you: the games, the food, the fun and the presents – all arranged just for you, Pine Tree."

There was an ominous pause.

"You ready to open your present, then?"

Dipper sighed. "What is it?" he asked wearily, dreading the inevitable answer. "Another round of possession?"

"Jeez, kid, you act as if I don't have anything fresh up my sleeve. Possession and puppetry were all good fun back when I was still trapped in the Nightmare Realm with nothing to do but tool around the Mindscape looking for suckers like you, but now that I've gotten a physical form and an entire physical world to play with, I've moved on to sculpting. I mean, there's only so much fun you can have with a puppet before it breaks under the strain. But clay? You can twist it in any direction you like, rip it to pieces in any way you please, and you can still smoosh it back together and start sculpting all over again!"

For the second time in as many minutes, the bottom dropped out of Dipper's stomach. "Oh no," he whispered. "Oh _no…"_

Bill's eyelids curled into a hideous approximation of a smile. "Oh **YES,** " he boomed triumphantly, and without another word, snapped his fingers.

The pain was nothing short of incredible, a scream of mingled fear and agony escaping Dipper's throat before he could stop himself; he'd promised himself a thousand times that he wouldn't give Bill the satisfaction of hearing him scream, no matter what the demented triangle did to him, but here he was nonetheless, wailing and sobbing for mercy.

He didn't have to guess what Bill was doing to him either: he'd encountered too many weird and impossible things over the course of the summer not to identify the supernatural by presence, and after casting a spell or two of his own, magic was all too easy to recognize. Bill was pouring magic directly into his heart, flooding every artery and valve and ventricle in his body with purest Weirdness, until Dipper could actually _see_ his veins glowing luminous blue beneath his skin as the energy pulsed towards his extremities.

And as he lay there, writhing and twitching in agony, he felt his body suddenly begin to change _:_ his skeleton warped and shrivelled, every bone in his body shrinking and twisting in unnatural directions; his legs bent backwards, knees reversing direction with an audible _crack;_ his feet narrowed and withered away, a hard black exoskeleton forming over his swiftly-merging toes; even his ears shifted to the top of his head, while his eyes bulged and oozed in their relocated sockets as Bill's magic altered them in a dozen unseeable ways. Finally, his hair turned white and grew explosively across his body, forming a thick, woolly fleece that left only his face exposed; in the end, Dipper could only look down at his woolly arms and scream "What did you do to me?!"

"Happy Birthday, Pine Tree!" Bill cackled. "You wanted a chance to study the mysteries of Gravity Falls, so now you get to study the greatest of them all: Dipper Pines, the human ball of clay!"

"But what did you turn me into? Why this form?" Dipper bleated pathetically.

"Isn't it obvious? I said there'd be entertainment, kiddo, and you're it! I hope you remember how the Lamby Lamby Dance goes, because there's a whole roomful of Henchmaniacs just waiting for a command performance, and I gave you the perfect shape to match…"

* * *

Dipper had thought he'd gotten over his dislike for the Lamby Lamby Dance; after all, as embarrassing as his childhood party favour was, his previous command performance had managed to save the lives of Wendy and the others – and earn him a little bit of gratitude from Wendy in the process. Evidently, he'd thought wrong, for now he hated it worse than ever.

The audience was bad enough: when they weren't laughing at him, the Henchmaniacs insisted on singing along, repeating every single stanza of that awful, _awful_ tune as loudly and clumsily as possible, making an already painful set of lyrics all the more excruciating through sheer force of tone-deafness. If any of them thought that Dipper was growing numb to the embarrassment, they were given free rein to spice up the show, usually by throwing chairs at him or bombarding the stage with champagne flutes. As if humiliating the "birthday boy" wasn't bad enough, Bill would occasionally shanghai some horribly unlucky musicians from the ruined world below and have them provide musical accompaniment: fully-orchestrated editions of the Lamby Lamby Dance didn't amuse for long, however, and these particular performances usually ended with Xanthar dive-bombing the orchestra pit.

But unbelievably enough, the audience wasn't the worst part. No, the single worst part of the whole ghastly party was the plainly obvious fact that Dipper's new body just wasn't suited to any of it: sheep could not, in fact, stand up on their hind legs and dance – lambs least of all – and while Dipper's "Lamby" form was human enough to allow him at least some semblance of bipedal movement, it simply wasn't meant for dancing, no matter how basic. His hooves had almost no traction on the smooth floorboards, so he spent most of his time clattering wildly across the stage like a dog in socks; attempting the "don't-don't-don't" march was just about impossible given that Dipper's legs didn't bend that way anymore, and leaning over for the "Mammy-mammy-mammy" pointing was an invitation to lose all balance. Jumping or kneeling usually ended with him toppling over and landing flat on his face, which was invariably rewarded with thunderous laughter from the audience.

He tried to resist – lord only knew he _tried:_ more than once, he refused to perform at all; more than once, he tried to flee the stage as fast as his malformed hooves could carry him. And when that didn't work, he resorted to sabotaging the show by any means available to him: he changed the lyrics to include subliminal insults, he made obscene gestures with his hooves, he threw the chairs right back at the audience, and in general, he did everything he could to make the whole experience as miserable for the Henchmaniacs as it was for him. But Bill was unfortunately still paying attention, and every attempt at insurrection – no matter how minor – was immediately rewarded with a short but agonizing electric shock to Dipper's soft tissues. For good measure, he had to apologise for spoiling the fun, or risk another cattle prod to the armpit.

Fortunately, after two long hours and god only knew how many performances, Bill and the Henchmaniacs finally lost interest in the Lamby Lamby Dance. Maybe the spectacle of watching Dipper falling over and breaking his teeth just didn't thrill the way it used to, maybe they'd realized that it was too similar to Gideon's old punishment; Dipper didn't know and didn't care.

Unfortunately, Bill chose that moment to unveil the second act of the show: Dipper's body was still saturated in transmuting magic, and a single command from Bill or the Henchmaniacs was enough to kick off another painful transformation. From then on, the rest of the party was an all-out freakshow with Dipper the Human Ball of Clay as both the star and the butt of the jokes, and with every single member of the audience continuously bellowing suggestions for new shapes.

"A dog! Make it look rabid!"

"A swarm of mosquitoes! Make it at least two hundred!"

"Turn into Pyronica! I wanna see what happens if you try and kiss her!"

"A rat! A _plague_ rat! No, with bigger fangs! You haven't got enough mange – try again!"

And with every suggestion, Dipper could only kneel on the floor, shivering and whimpering in pain as his body changed entirely of its own accord: his flesh oozed and ran like molten wax as it shifted between reptilian scales, leathery pachyderm hide, bug-infested fur, porcupine quills, feathers from a thousand different species of bird, glistening insectoid carapace, and – in one particularly bizarre case – coral. One minute he was the size of a humpback whale, the next he was no bigger than a mouse; one minute, his bones expanded so rapidly that his skeleton almost burst through his skin, the next he shrank so suddenly and so unevenly that he almost collapsed under the weight of his oversized head. In one performance, his clothes tore open as he took the shape of an elephant seal; the next, they billowed down on him like a collapsing circus tent as he took the form of a chinchilla – and no matter how much damage they sustained, they always reappeared once he returned to human form, fresh clothes moulding themselves out of his bare skin (except for his cap, oddly enough).

In one transformation, a beard erupted from his chin as he dwindled to the size of a gnome – a little pointed hat moulding itself from his skull for good measure. In another, his flesh dissolved into unwanted candy as his body ballooned into the nightmarish form of the Summerween Trickster. There were no limits to the transformations he was subjected to: he went from mundane to magical, from young to old, from short to tall, from humanoid to decidedly not; he became a miniature dustbowl, an anthropomorphic mass of flame, a walking ocean complete with tiny fish, a colossal humanoid quagmire of cloying mud.

And all of it – every torturous second of it – _hurt._

After about five and a half hours of continuous transformation, Dipper found himself once again slumping to the floor in an agonized heap as his latest metamorphosis came to a close. This time, he didn't bother getting up: he just curled into a ball and lay there, eyes shut tight, hoping against hope that he'd find himself in the Mystery Shack when he finally opened his eyes.

Needless to say, it didn't work.

"Come on, Pine Tree!" Bill shouted. "On your feet! We've still got a show to put on!"

Dipper ignored him.

"You really are determined to be a spoilsport, aren't ya? Come on, give me a scream or two, just to let me know you've still got a few neurons firing in there."

Once again, Dipper refused to answer.

"Fine," sighed Bill. "If you want to give me the silent treatment, that's fine by me. I don't need you to play along, really… but if you don't want to exercise your right to coherent speech, then I suppose you don't need it at all."

Dipper suddenly felt himself rising into the air, and opened his eyes to see that Bill was now telekinetically hauling him upright… and at the same time, whispering something under his breath. He couldn't hear a word of what Bill had said, but _something_ had clearly recognized it, because he could already feel his body starting to change again.

"Bill, what are you dooooiiiinnnnNNNNNYANG NYANG NYANG NYANG NYANG YAAAAAAA KHHHHHH AAAAAARGH!"

If the last few transformations had been unpleasant, _this_ was a whole new level of discomfort: even after all he'd learned about the paper clones, he'd never realized just how much pain Paper Jam Dipper had been in throughout his short and unhappy life. Hopelessly mangled in the process of transitioning from paper to animate object, his crumpled throat and flattened lungs made breathing almost impossible, and the creases over his eyeballs left his vision a hopelessly distorted mess; even the use of his arms and legs was a trial, in no small part due to the fact that his bones and muscles were still partially 2-D. And since his vocal cords and jaw were still crumpled up like Toby Determined's old Pinto, communication was effectively out of the question until he learned sign language.

"Isn't this better, Pine Tree?" Bill sneered. "Now you don't have to speak to me ever again!"

"KKKKKKKKHHHRRHGHG," said Dipper, who was still struggling to breathe.

"Does anyone in the audience have a water pistol on hand?"

"YAAAAAAAAARGH KH KH KH KHHHH!"

"You see? It's a terrible thing not having the right to coherent speech anymore, isn't it?"

"NYANG NYANG NYANG FUUUUUUUUUUHHH!"

"Oooh, don't need subtitles for _that_ one, do we?"

Teeth yawned loudly. "I think we should change him back, boss," he said. "It was much more fun when we could understand him begging for mercy."

The other Henchmaniacs muttered in agreement, but far from being dismayed by the sudden drop in audience approval, Bill looked happier than ever. "Then it's time for Act Three!" he cried, rubbing his hands with undisguised delight.

Suddenly, Dipper was human again, slumped on the floor and struggling to get his breath back. "Act Three?" he panted. "Does it involve me being sent back to my cell in a wheelchair? Or were you just going to pack me into a giant kiln and watch me shatter into a million pieces?"

Bill laughed raucously. "I think you might be taking the human ball of clay thing a bit literally, kid. Besides, I've got something much more exciting than that: I promised you games, and I've got one cooked up just for you. You'll like it, I promise…"

 _Yeah, and after you conned just about everyone in the family except for Grunkle Stan, I'm_ _ **really**_ _going to take a promise from you at face value._

"…And it'll mean getting to see your sister again!"

In spite of himself, Dipper's heart gave the tiniest of leaps.

The hope must have shown on his face, because Bill cackled louder than ever. "I thought that would get your attention!" he shrieked triumphantly. "That's right, Pine Tree. You'll get to see all your old friends again: Shooting Star, Question Mark, Fez, Sixer, Red and the rest of the gang. In fact, you'll _have_ to find them if you want to win my little game."

Dipper took his deepest breath yet. This couldn't end well: Bill was almost certainly lying, and even if he wasn't, the game would probably be rigged in his favour. But he couldn't afford to pass up this opportunity: he _needed_ to know they were all still safe.

"Okay," he sighed. "I'm listening. What's the game?"

"Think of it as a scavenger hunt, a quest for the only thing that could possibly matter to you now: the components of the Zodiac Wheel – the _originals,_ not substitutes."

" _What?"_

"You and your friends got a little _too_ lucky that day, Pine Tree. I mean, you try to form the one thing that can possibly stop me, and you just happen to have all the people you need to make it work – all in the same room? I mean, what are the odds? Hardly entertaining, if you ask me. So, I'm going to make it a challenge this time: I've scattered your friends across the world and given them their own separate games to play. You, out of all my toys, will have the chance to find them and unite them once again. If you win, you get to put me down once and for all."

Once again, Dipper's heart gave a leap. "Really?" he asked, not daring to believe it. Somewhere in the back of his mind, doubt hammered an override switch, and he added, "You've lied to me before, Bill. How can I be sure the Wheel will work at all? What's to stop you from sabotaging the whole ritual? How do I know you haven't made this game unbeatable?"

Bill rolled his eye. "You don't. Simple as that. If you ever want to see your friends again, you'll just to take this on faith."

"So you expect me to believe that you'd risk losing everything just for a bit of entertainment?"

"Why not? Have you ever known me to be serious about taking risks?"

In spite of himself, Dipper's optimism kicked up a few memories by way of evidence: Bipper slapping himself across the face with an exhilarated shriek of "pain is hilarious!" Bill, now in reality, casually shrugging off Grunkle Ford's misaimed shot without a flicker of anxiety. Bill leering down at Dipper, smugly daring to find some way of stopping him once and for all.

But no sooner had he considered the facts, his doubt dredged up a few memories as well: the end of their first encounter, with Bill shocked and enraged by the simple fact that Dipper and the others had managed to best him, if only for a few seconds; the puppet show, with Bipper disoriented from sleep deprivation and unable to believe that he'd been caught wrong-footed; even the fight with the Shacktron, and Bill's pain and anger over the loss of his eye.

All evidence suggested that Bill was almost certainly setting him up for another con. But what choice did he have? If there was even the _tiniest_ chance of seeing the others and ending Bill's reign of terror, it had to be worth a try.

"You'd really give me the chance to defeat you?" he asked hesitantly.

"Don't get too excited, kiddo: this isn't going to be the cakewalk it was on your last try. This round, you've got to deal with an entire planet worth of Weirdmageddon, not just some hick town in the middle of nowhere; on top of that, you've got to rescue your friends from prisons as good as Mabel's bubble – if not better. Oh, and you're going to spend the journey transforming, too."

" _Transforming?!_ How am I supposed to finish this scavenger hunt in time if you're constantly turning me into new things? How is that fair?"

"Aw, look on the bright side, will ya? While you're moving, I won't be in control of your transformations. In point of fact, nobody will. Your body will be on shuffle for every step of your journey, random shapes at random moments, some of them suitable, some of them not. Once you stop moving, you're off shuffle and you're back on my playlist – my little incentive to keep you moving."

"Is there a time limit on this game?"

"Kid, you've got an entire planet to search! Believe me, _I'm_ not going to give you a ticking clock on this. Take as long as you like. Of course, you've still got to break your friends out of their prisons and keep them alive in the meantime: if you fail – or if you don't feel like playing at all…" Bill chuckled, his voice dropping to a low, menacing purr. "You might think Earth's hellish now, but you'd be amazed at just bad things can get with a little help from yours truly. I mean, I haven't even gotten your parents involved yet!"

Dipper's heart skipped a beat. "You mean they're okay?" he blurted. "Mom and Dad are still alive?"

"I made sure of it, Pine Tree. While their friends and neighbours drowned in their own blood, I made sure that your dear Mommy and Daddy rode out the worst of Weirdmageddon in safety and… well, something _like_ comfort at any rate. Of course, that can change in a hurry if you don't feel like playing along, and I'll be more than happy to add a few other beloved relatives to the torture schedule if you're still not feeling motivated enough: your grunkles, your sister-"

"Okay, _okay!_ I'll do it. I'll do it, just… just don't hurt them."

"You have my word. As long as you keep playing, they'll be safe. Just remember: this isn't just a precious second chance for you; this is still a game played on my terms, by my rules, and for _my_ entertainment. Take as long as you like, search wherever you please, but whatever you do…"

Suddenly, Bill was hovering right in front of Dipper, his body now a hundred feet tall and coloured vivid crimson, his massive eye cobwebbed with ugly black veins. **"DON'T** _ **BORE**_ **ME,"** he thundered.

"Clear?" he asked, now back to normal.

"Crystal. When do I start?"

Bill paused, stroking his non-existent chin in contemplation. "Hmmmmmmm…" he mused. "How about right now?"

And with that, he snapped his fingers with another telltale spark of magic. A moment later, the stage abruptly flickered out of reality, leaving Dipper standing on empty air: he had just enough time to notice the gaping hole cut in the floor of the throne room, before gravity finally caught up and sent him plummeting towards the ground.

For a minute and a half, Dipper plunged through the bowels of the Fearamid, past the cellblock, past the art gallery, past the torture chamber, past a thousand national monuments sandwiched tastelessly together in homage to Bill's victory, and finally through a garbage chute carved in the bottom of the shaft that sent him tumbling out of the Fearamid once and for all. Unfortunately, this left him about thirty thousand feet in the air, with no clear way of escaping the death dive that was soon to follow.

And then, just as he was wondering if he was going to lose the game before he even began, he _changed:_ his arms shrank back into his body, his legs fused together, his head narrowed into a shark-like prow, and his skin hardened into a smooth metallic carapace. But it wasn't until fire suddenly erupted from where his feet had been that he realized that he was now a missile – aimed directly at the ground. He was no longer falling, but accelerating faster and faster towards the distant target: the sky blurred around him, the clouds suddenly reduced to faint smudges on the horizon, and the ground itself grew until it blotted out all competing thoughts in the armed warhead that had replaced Dipper's brain.

A split-second later, he hit the ground and exploded in a massive fireball that immediately engulfed two abandoned houses, seventeen wrecked cars, a fifty-foot stretch of the neighbouring road, and a billboard advertising the Just Call Us Siffy Channel ("Giant monsters, wrestling and rip-off artists!").

And right at the heart of the explosion, Dipper found himself unexpectedly alive, transformed into a figure composed entirely of flame: striding out of the inferno, leaving footprint-shaped patches of scorched asphalt in his wake, he made his way down the road for perhaps a hundred yard before the starved flames extinguished themselves, leaving him human once again.

 _Okay,_ he thought. _I'm still alive. So far so good. Question is, where do I go from here?_

He looked around for any discernible landmarks – no easy task, considering that Bill had spent most of the last few days burning them down to make way for his own hideous-looking monuments.

However, judging from the charred roadsigns, he'd had the good fortune to land somewhere in the vicinity of Roadkill County, and though most of the trees in the area were either petrified or on fire, he could still recognize the outskirts of the all-too-distinctive forest that bordered Gravity Falls. Maybe – with a little luck – he might make some headway on his search for the others there.

So, finally allowing himself a hint of optimism at long last, Dipper set off at a brisk march with a new and purposeful stride.

Or least, he _would_ have if his feet hadn't literally turned to rubber in that moment. And he probably would have made more progress down the highway if he hadn't sprung a leak and started losing air. Eventually, he managed to awkwardly roll his deflated body a few yards down the median strip, just long enough for the next transformation to kick in: now a human again, he set off down the road at a brisk jog. And then, just as he was expecting the next transformation to kick in, something crashed into the back of his head. Once he'd picked himself off the asphalt and gotten a sense of the spectacular lump on his skull, he found the offending object sitting directly in front of him none the worse for wear.

It was a gaudily-wrapped present complete with a red satin ribbon, a smattering of smiley-face stickers, and a novelty birthday card – a garish cartoon depiction of Dipper himself, mouth agape in terror. Unsurprisingly, opening the card revealed a hideous pop-up version of Bill exploding out of the cartoon Dipper's brain, sending blood and eyeballs everywhere.

A ghastly scrawl inside the card proclaimed _Happy Birthday, Pine Tree! I told you you'd have a chance to study the greatest mystery of Gravity Falls, and I meant it: you're going to have to study this one in detail. After all, even I'm not sure how you'll change in the long run, so be sure to take plenty of notes for future reference – when you're not playing my game, of course. Have fun! Love, Bill._

 _PS: try not to leave your hat behind again, scatterbrain._

Inside the package was a solemn-looking leather-bound journal, almost identical to Grunkle Ford's journals – with two major exceptions: firstly, every page of the book was blank; secondly, the familiar six-fingered hand insignia on the cover had been replaced with the shape of an ordinary hand, its middle finger raised in mocking salute.

 _Fitting,_ Dipper thought.

A moment later, his cap landed on his head – Bill's way of proving that Dipper had nothing to complain about.

So, he once again set off down the road, trying to ignore the sensation of his flesh beginning to warp once again – trying not to listen to the faint echo of Bill's obnoxious laughter, and failing with every step…

* * *

A/N: Coming up next, Mabel's game. Can you guess how deep the rabbit hole goes? Feel free to review and furnish me with your theories and opinions!


	3. The Endless Summer And The Gilded Cage

A/N: *ahem* AAAAAARGH! I'm back - should have posted this sooner, but mild health scares got in the way. For those of you who might be under the impression that this story's been nothing but introductions so far, don't worry: we're almost out of the "introducing Bill's games" segment, and after that, we'll be dealing with the real meat and potatoes of the challenges. In the meantime, a massive thank you to everyone who reviewed, favourited and followed, and I sincerely hope I can uphold the quality over the next few chapters.

Oh, and Female Fantasy Fan? Bill's a favourite character of mine as well - but in truth, I love all the characters in _Gravity Falls_. I've always liked the curious blend of the eldritch and the flippant, the horrifying and the comedic: he's like a weird hybrid of AM, the Joker, and Nyarlathotep - and in this chapter, I'll definitely be demonstrating the more Jokerish aspects. Oh, and in regards to pairings... well, I'm not going to spoil the whole story, but without saying too much, Pacifica is harboring a crush on Dipper. Question is, can it be maintained, let alone reciprocated in the current situation? Find out in the next chapters!

Be warned: this chapter does get a bit talky, and I can only hope I can keep Bill in character while he's speechifying.

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's begin! Constructive criticism and long reviews are always welcome, especially when it comes to those typos that creep in at 2 in the morning. Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: _Gravity Falls_ is not mine; it floated out of my hands before I could grab it. Also, there's a _Red Dwarf_ reference here: see if you can spot it.

* * *

To Mabel's immense surprise, it was the sun that woke her. Not the screams of terrified people, not the deafening roar of cities vanishing in nuclear fireballs, not even the nerve-shredding sound of Bill's obnoxious laughter – just the gentle warmth of the sun on her face. Nor was she in any pain: she'd been bruised quite badly when Bill had grabbed her during that last chase through the Fearamid, and she was pretty sure that that he'd had something awful waiting for her when she awoke – but no: she felt fine. In fact, the only thing out of the ordinary was the faint tickle of grass under her fingertips.

Puzzled, she yawned, stretched, and opened her eyes. To her continued surprise, she wasn't sitting in some famous park Bill had superglued to the side of the Fearamid for the hell of it; she wasn't lying in the ruins of post-presidential Washington D.C., surrounded on all sides by burning buildings and zombie hordes and partying Henchmaniacs and god only knew what else. In fact, this place didn't appear to have been touched by Weirdmageddon at all. If anything, it looked like-

 _Gravity Falls._ Even with alarm bells sounding from one end of her brain to the next, there was no mistaking the familiar shape sprawled ahead of her. All the familiar landmarks were there, all restored to their former not-quite-glory: Main Street was clear of craters and madness bubbles, the water tower was not walking around on spider legs, the statue of Nathaniel Northwest stood proud and unmelted on its plinth, the waterfall did not appear to be flowing upwards – not a single sign of Bill's early days remained. And above her, the sun glowed almost red, casting a familiar ruby glow on the town as it drifted from afternoon to sunset.

She was back in Gravity Falls, _right before Weirdmageddon._

A tiny bubble of hope drifted to the front of her mind and sat there, wobbling ever so slightly; the slightest breeze might burst it, but for the first time since Bill had won, she could hope, however hesitantly. Was it possible – just _slightly_ possible – that she'd been dreaming all along? Could Mabel really have dreamed everything about Weirdmageddon? Maybe so… but when had she fallen asleep? It was too late for her to be out on her birthday preparations, and the only time she'd been out of the Mystery Shack after that had been-

 _The argument with Dipper,_ she realized. _I ran out into the woods, I didn't stop until I was far away from the shack, I sat down… and then I must have dozed off. Probably only for a few minutes if the sun's just starting to set. Question is, where's Dipper's nerd bag? He's going to want it back, what with all his books and notes and-_

One or two memories that Mabel had been doing her best to forget gave a few unpleasant rumblings. _Don't go there,_ she told herself. _Don't think about it. It didn't happen. Just walk back through the forest, find the bag,_ carefully _carry it back to the Mystery Shack and give it to Dipper… and then give him the biggest Sincere Sibling Hug ever and tell him that you're perfectly okay with him taking Grunkle Ford's apprenticeship, and give him another hug for good measure. And then hug Ford and tell him about the nightmare you had, because he'll understand it and the two of you haven't talked enough anyway. And hug Grunkle Stan too. And Soos. And Wendy. Come to think of it, I could probably give Pacifica a great big hug as well…_

And then, just as she getting to her feet and starting to imagine the massive hug she was going to give her parents when she returned home, she happened to notice something unusual about the hill she'd awoken on. She didn't know what it was at first, but she could tell that something was off: she didn't have Dipper's obsessive eye for details, but there was something about this place that seemed _wrong_. It wasn't until she heard the echo of her footsteps that she realized that it was the sound that was disturbing her – or more accurately, the complete lack of it.

The hill and most of the surrounding landscape was completely silent. No birdsong, no wind whistling through the trees, no traffic on the roads, no angry gnomes swearing eternal vengeance, no giant prehistoric monsters trudging aimlessly through the forest, not even the faintest whisper. Mabel hadn't been paying that much attention to little things like ambient sound following the argument with Dipper, but she knew for a fact that it was impossible for Gravity Falls to get _this_ quiet. Something was very, very wrong.

That tiny bubble of hope was starting to wobble precariously, and somewhere in the pit of her stomach, dread was already starting to broil and steam. Mabel tried to convince herself that she'd just blundered into another one of Gravity Falls' random oddities, that sound would return soon, but the dread just went on simmering, even as she made her way down the hill towards the waiting streets. She must have been walking faster than she thought, for the sun was still well above the horizon by the time she reached Main Street, so at least she didn't have to worry about having to investigate the situation by moonlight just yet.

Unfortunately, as she stepped off the grass and onto the sidewalk, several extremely troubling realizations hit her at once: first, the reason why Dipper's bag was nowhere in sight was because she'd awoken several hundred yards from where she'd actually set it down. Secondly, she hadn't wandered into a random pocket of noiselessness or anything like that, and sound wasn't likely to return. Thirdly, the reason why she wasn't hearing the sound of traffic was immediately obvious: nothing was moving.

Directly ahead of her, a car stood deathly still, not parked or broken down, but _frozen._ A closer look revealed that its driver was staring straight ahead, hand paused in mid-air directly above the horn; the car itself was surrounded by a tiny hailstorm of gravel kicked up from the road, and a small cloud of exhaust hung in the air just behind the tailpipe, as motionless as the rest of the vehicle. A little way down the street, a few pedestrians were frozen in the act of crossing the road, several of them flipping the bird at the oncoming car. Not too far away from that, more familiar-looking faces had been frozen converging on the town square: Grenda and Candy, Pacifica and her parents, Toby Determined, Manly Dan Corduroy and his sons – all of them unmoving, with no sign that they would ever move again.

Somehow, time had stopped in Gravity Falls.

Heart hammering, Mabel turned away from the town square and made her way down Main Street at a brisk walk, hoping against hope that the situation wasn't as bad as it looked. But unfortunately, it was: less than thirty feet down the road, she'd already seen a flock of birds frozen in mid-flight, an avalanche of stolen groceries cascading out of a shoplifter's coat, and a tiny little man in a miner's helmet hovering motionlessly in the open doors of Skull Fracture, less than three feet from the bouncer who'd thrown him. Everywhere she went, the townsfolk of Gravity Falls stood, silent and still as statues, and there was nothing Mabel could do to rouse them.

By the time she'd gone two blocks, she'd broken into a run and was sprinting frantically down the road, propelling herself towards the distant woods through sheer unadulterated fear. She knew that running wasn't going to make much difference if time really had stopped, but she was beyond caring by then. Besides, it wasn't as if there was any point in waiting at the bus stop. She had to see just how far this went, to see if the situation really was as bad as she thought it was – and that meant making her way to the Mystery Shack. Hopefully, the unicorn hair shielding the building would have been enough to protect it from whatever had stopped time, and maybe Dipper and Ford were already trying to solve the problem.

 _Question is, why haven't I been frozen as well?_

Naturally, this joined the long list of questions she had no answers to, and even if there was some clever way of learning the what and the why, she couldn't afford to waste time on it now; she had to make sure that Dipper was okay, that _everyone_ was okay and that they'd be able to figure out a solution together.

The forest loomed ahead of her, somehow a thousand times more ominous than ever before: where once the sunset had made Gravity Falls look so inviting, now seemed to have drained the life out of the familiar woodland, leaving everything dyed crimson and withering under the merciless glare of the sun; past the mouth of the forest, the woods were crowded with shadows, every tree casting another menacing-looking shape across the ground, all of them frozen in the act of reaching out towards the road. Mabel tried not to look at them as she sprinted past: she couldn't start worrying about anything else, not now. All she had to do was ignore the shadows, the trees blurring into unrecognizable shapes, her aching feet, her oxygen-starved lungs, the fear, the anxiety, the guilt and everything else under the sun. All she had to do was ignore that until-

Up ahead, the Mystery Shack drifted into view. The sight alone was enough to make Mabel stagger to a halt: it couldn't have been much more than a week since she'd seen the dreary old tourist trap in its original condition, but it felt like years. Since that awful day when she'd fled the building in tears, she'd only had a chance to see the Shack as a gloomy shelter for the few desperate survivors of Weirdmageddon, and then as the Shacktron, and now the place was standing in the road ahead in its original condition: the chipped plastic totem pole, the massive sign with the perpetually-missing "S", the infamously chintzy outdoor exhibits, the corroding golf carts, that triangular attic window, the potholed carpark – all restored to normal at long last. And then, just as Mabel was starting to reflect on how much she'd missed the place, her eyes happened to stray to the Shack's door – and she noticed the familiar figure on the porch.

Dipper was frozen, paused in the act of sprinting out of the shack, his face a mask of fear and concern. Inside the Shack, Ford was hurrying after him, his glasses almost opaque in the glare of the sun, a worried frown stamped on his worn features. For a moment, Mabel could only stare in horror at the motionless figures; then the realization finally caught up with her: whatever had happened to Gravity Falls, unicorn hair hadn't been enough to stop it from affecting people inside the Mystery Shack.

So, once again, what _had_ happened? And why wasn't she affected too?

But Mabel already knew the answer: she clearly remembered the direction she'd taken on that terrible day, and knew for a fact that Dipper had been frozen in the act of pursuing her. All she had to do was follow the trail back across the car park and back into the woods – this time off the path and into the bleakest, densest depths. Less than five minutes from the Mystery Shack, she found two familiar figures sprawled in the undergrowth: the first was obviously Blendin Blandin, easily recognized by his signature grey uniform and handlebar moustache hairdo; the second was-

 _Her._

Same face, same hair, same sweater, same everything… except this version of her was frozen in time just like everyone else in Gravity Falls, paused at the very moment she'd lost consciousness. Of course, the lack of passing time made it impossible to tell if she was breathing or not, and Mabel was left with the disturbing impression that she was actually looking down at her own dead body.

Shuddering, she looked away, and finally saw the smashed remains of Grunkle Ford's snow-globe lying in the grass between the two figures. Among the chunks of shattered glass and ruined machinery, tiny motes of lights glowed ominously, some of them already paused in the act of flaring to life: if time ever restarted, the Rift would burst free of the snow-globe and expand across the sky, and Weirdmageddon would begin again.

Inside Mabel's head, the tiny bubble of hope burst.

Now there was no denying that everything that had happened over the last few days had been real... and now she knew for a fact that it was all her fault. During her stay in the Bubble, she'd been able to fool herself into thinking that her hazy memories of the event were just dreams, and even once Dipper had explained the truth behind the Rift to her, she'd never dared to imagine that what she'd seen in those vague recollections had actually happened. But now the repressed memories were free, and now that Mabel understood the significance of that odd-looking snow-globe lying in pieces at her feet, she knew that Bill's victory had been her doing all along.

Trembling (possibly in fear, possibly in grief), Mabel found herself reaching out to the erupting Rift, desperately wishing that she could somehow restart time and stop those tiny sparks from unleashing Weirdmageddon. But as her fingers brushed the first of the embers, the light from the snow-globe flared vividly, sending a ten-foot column of eye-searing energies into the air; the world itself _shifted_ and parted like a curtain, and before Mabel could react, the light had enveloped her.

Suddenly, she was no longer standing in the middle of the woods, doing god-only-knew-what. Instead, she found herself sitting on a beanbag chair in the middle of-

"Oh no _,"_ Mabel groaned. "Not _again_ …"

Mabel's royal bedchamber hadn't changed much since her last visit: every element of the décor remained intact, from the knee-deep carpets to the massive bed; even the ornaments on the desk remained unchanged. Outside, the cloudless sky was a lush, inviting blue, a honeyed promise of days spent enjoying everything this tailor-made paradise had to offer; and while she couldn't see any further out the window from her current position, everything she'd seen so far told her that Mabeland had been recreated in perfect detail, every captivating fantasy made flesh – all the better to discourage the prison's only inmate from leaving.

She knew there was no point in looking outside: after all, she'd seen enough of this place the last time and facing the world she'd done her best to abandon on her previous visit could only end badly. In fact, Mabel would have been glad to just sit there, quietly banging her head against the cushions, had she not happened to notice something different about the world beyond her window – something almost beyond description but too blatant to go unnoticed. So, Mabel tentatively rose from the beanbag and shuffled through the hedge-like carpet to the nearest window – and immediately she realized that world she'd been imprisoned in had changed significantly since her last visit.

Back when she'd first been caged here, Mabeland had been a loveably anarchic mess, a chaotic jumble of her fantasies and desires made real and smooshed together into one brightly-coloured sugary-sweet storybook landscape; the only time when it had even vaguely seemed orderly had been in the courtroom, and even then the whimsy had been almost impossible to keep at bay – just the way Mabel liked it. And looking down upon her prison, Mabel found herself struck by a distinct sense of sadness as she realized that she'd never see the old Mabeland ever again, not even in her dreams – not without remembering the world that had replaced it.

This new Mabeland was very different: there was still some whimsy to be found here, maybe even a tiny bit of joyful anarchy, but that was all that remained of her old utopia. The background music had gone from a jaunty synth beat to a stirring, patriotic-sounding anthem played by a fully-fledged symphony orchestra, with blaring brass, thunderous percussion, and – here and there – remnants of the original synth music. The roller-coaster hills and soft, plush ground had been replaced with wide, straight boulevards and gleaming, polished marble. The garish bouncy-castle buildings had solidified into heavily-fortified complexes encrusted with battlements and studded with watchtowers; true, they were still just as colourful and handsome as they had been in the old days, but now all that beauty seemed designed to oppress rather than entertain.

The monuments built in Mabel's honour were still here, but they'd been drastically redesigned to erase any sign of joyfulness or benevolence from her portrayals: the statues now had her dressed in some kind of military dress uniform, complete with epaulettes, gold braiding, a sash, and enough medals to sink an entire fleet of warships; the murals depicted her as an angry god raining fire upon a defenceless city from on high, a congregation of cowering subjects futilely begging for mercy among the doomed streets. Everywhere Mabel looked, her own face stared back at her, cold-eyed, unsmiling and entirely without mercy.

On every street corner, a colossal watchtower loomed over the roaming citizenry, constantly scrutinizing every inch of its territory with a luminous pyramid-shaped eye hovering just above its uppermost spire. Along the stately boulevards, cuddly kitten soldiers in gleaming white uniforms marched in lockstep formation, with every platoon lead by a massive waffle guard and every unit armed to the teeth with a nightmarish assortment of weapons; not far behind them, massive silver-hulled tanks and war machines followed, their colossal flanks decorated with gold leaf and silver unicorn emblems. And far above the busy streets, great hovering billboards proclaimed an endless series of soul-crushing messages to all present:

"HAPPINESS CANNOT BE SHARED."

"HURT THEM BEFORE THEY HURT YOU."

"EMPATHY IS DEATH."

"THEY'LL ONLY HOLD YOU BACK."

"SELFISHNESS IS A VIRTUE."

"BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY! FABULOUS PRIZES TO BE WON!"

Mabel would have probably spent hours staring out the window at the madness on display, had she not heard the sound of muffled guffawing from somewhere behind her; startled, she spun around, hand immediately straying to a grappling hook that wasn't there anymore, and found herself staring into a massive slit-pupiled eyeball.

Bill Cipher let out a piercing shriek of laughter, his detestable giggling immediately worming its way into her ears and doing unpleasant things to her skull. "Welcome back to Mabeland, Shooting Star!" he cackled hatefully. "The place just hasn't been the same without you!"

"No, no, _no!"_ Mabel snarled. "I've been through this once already, and I made it pretty clear that I wasn't interested in staying; I want out, _now!"_

"Yeah right," Bill chortled. " _You_ made it pretty clear. Wasn't your brother doing most of the talking on the day? As far as I can tell, he was doing most of the thinking as well. In fact, you barely had to make a decision at all, Shooting Star: all you had to do was hug ol' Pine Tree and let everything you really wanted just slip through your fingers! Hardly the biggest statement of independence you've ever made in your life, kiddo."

"It doesn't matter _how_ it happened, Bill: I said no to this place before, and I don't want to waste any more time repeating myself. Now, I want out, and I want to know what you did to Dipper."

"Ah, forget him. He's busy with a game of his own, and I guarantee you he won't be heading in this direction anytime soon. The same goes for the rest of your friends: they're all off in their own walled-off playgrounds, scattered from one end of my world to the next, all of them obediently playing the games I've set them."

"In other words, they're _not_ all frozen? So what I saw back there wasn't real?"

"Real? _Real?!"_ Bill howled with laughter. "Reality is what I say it is, Shooting Star! I've split this planet into so many different realities you could meet your brother five times in a row and never know which one of them was the real deal. The world as you now know it is a layer cake of interlocking pocket dimensions and sideways existences: a place for everything and everything in its place, including layer cakes."

Mabel sighed, desperately trying not to think about cake – or anything else that might make a change from the stockpiles of brown meat in the Shack. "Is there another reality you can send me to?" she asked, wearily. "Because, like I said, I'm not interested in this place and never will be. So, you can just take me back to the Fearamid and leave me in a cell, because I'm not interested in playing whatever weird game you've arranged-"

"What makes you think I've arranged a game for you at all?"

"Alright then, I'm not interested in staying in the same old prison no matter how many times you've redecorated it, and you shouldn't bother keeping me in a place I've already broken out of-"

Bill's eye narrowed sharply. "It's not a prison either, Shooting Star," he said icily, all the shrill jollity gone from his voice. "Never was and never will be. It's a _gift."_

"It's _what?"_

"Did you ever wonder why I set you up in the Bubble when I could have easily just killed you? I didn't do that just to keep my enemies divided, you know; I wasn't just trying to keep you and the other components of the Wheel from joining forces. _I was rewarding you._ I gave you everything you could possibly want: happiness, luxury, power, isolation from the world you despised, your every wish granted, your every fantasy indulged. You didn't ask what had happened to the world outside, how you'd ended up in the Bubble or why you were given my gift: you embraced it, you accepted it, you treasured it…"

With a flicker of weirdness, Bill suddenly grew tall enough to fill the entire chamber, his top hat carving divots in the ceiling. **"AND THEN YOU THREW IT BACK IN MY FACE!"** he roared.

Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the rage was gone and Bill was back to normal. "But I wasn't angry," he continued. "I was just… disappointed. I've met a lot of failures in my long life, _Mabel,_ but you were the greatest of them all: you came _so_ close to realizing your true potential, closer than any of the others, but in the end you let me down and sank to the bottom with the rest of the losers."

Mabel blinked. "Others?" she echoed. "What others?"

"I've been keeping an eye on humanity for a very long time, Shooting Star: you're a funny little species when you get right down to it, always coming up with new ways to make me laugh, but _so_ frustrating! I mean, you have all these rules and codes and commandments, all these laws made up just to smother your happiness and hold you back: you people spend every day of your miserable little lives hiding behind one rule or another, too scared to do anything in case you break a law – until one day, you're old and worn-out, and you realize that you've wasted your entire life doing nothing but toeing the line, and then you have the nerve to get all upset and say "How the hell did that happen?" Even your criminals have codes of conduct! The few people who understand the worthlessness of laws only went and made up new laws the moment they had a little power!"

He sighed. "I had to live through that crap once already, back when I was just a native of the Second Dimension – before I freed it from all those annoying little laws set by _reality_. I didn't want to sit back and watch you end up flatter than the Second Dimension: you guys needed my help. But while I was figuring out ways to break in, I looked for people like me, people who'd understand how easy their lives would be if they just took what they wanted _._ Most of them I left to their own devices, but a few I made deals with… and in the end, both types ended up disappointing me. If they weren't stupid, they were unimaginative; if they weren't unimaginative, they were unambitious; and even if they were smart enough and driven enough, they just didn't have the guts to take their ambitions all the way to the end. No matter how far they took things, they always found some line in the sand they couldn't cross. Yeah, that was the one thing about your family that really got on my nerves."

"My family?"

"That's right, Shooting Star, _your family._ There's an awful lot of selfishness among the Pines – but I'll be damned if I know why, I'm pretty sure it's not genetic. But look at all the members of your family who'd had the chance to be great if only they'd put aside all those pointless little principles. Just look at your Great-Grandfather Filbrick, the man who wanted his kids to make him a fortune: he had the guts to dump Stan when he became a nuisance, but he didn't have the chutzpah to force his Golden Boy to study something _really_ lucrative. Locksmith-Mitchell's R &D department could make a millionaire out of any kid bright enough to make nerve gas out of expired coffee, but Ol' Filbrick didn't have the spine to make his fortune with blood money. And what about Stan? He could have made it big in the criminal underworld! With his adaptability, he could have taken over half the rackets in prison before his first month on the inside was over, made enough money on the outside to satisfy dear old dad and still have enough left over to set himself up for life. But no! Stanley Pines didn't want to deal drugs, didn't want to kill anyone; he was content to wallow in the mediocrity of his usual pathetic cons and watch his life fall to bits.

"And Fordsie – he was close. Brilliant, innovative, ambitious, brave enough to take unimaginable risks in pursuit of his dreams, and just isolated enough to take my advice. If he'd just accepted my final offer, he could have been like _me_! Can you imagine that? A human with the power of a god at his fingertips! But in the end, he got cold feet: you'd think a freak like Ford would have been happy to see the world vanish after all the insults it threw at him, but he just couldn't bear to see the whole thing spiral down the plughole. Even your brother could have gotten a lot more out of life if he'd had the courage to be really, _really_ selfish. I mean, you _know_ Pine Tree would have been happier if he'd just stopped tolerating you and all your little self-imposed missions: if he'd let that silly little piglet of yours slip away and allowed you to spend the next month tenderizing your skull against a totem pole, he would've had all summer to get to know Wendy better. But no: he couldn't bear to see you _weeping._

"You had a spark of potential, Shooting Star. You had creativity, you had guts, and you had some pretty powerful drives at work under that mop of yours – short term ambitions but ambitions nonetheless. You even had a bit of the old Gordian intelligence when push came to shove. Just look at that puppet show of yours: can you imagine anyone your age putting that much effort and talent into impressing a crush? True, you stopped short of achieving your best, but you caught my eye, kiddo. So I said to myself, 'here's a girl that knows what she wants and knows how to get it – just what I've been looking for. She just needs an opportunity, a little boost in the right direction.'" His voice rose to another ear-shredding yawp of laughter. "And girl, you saw that opportunity and you grabbed it with both hands! You gave me the Rift, you threw away the lives of everyone in Gravity Falls and the world beyond, and you didn't even think of what was happening outside the Bubble until Pine Tree came along and rubbed your nose in it!"

"But I didn't know what I was doing!" Mabel exploded. "I didn't know what giving you the Rift would mean – I didn't even know I was giving it to _you!_ You tricked me, just like you tricked Dipper!"

Bill rolled his eye. "There's always some excuse, isn't there? With every member of the Pines family, there's always some reason why it wasn't their fault: "But I was afraid I was going to lose Ford!" "But I couldn't get any further in my research!" "But I was sleep deprived!" "But I just wanted a little more summer!" Wah-wah, cry me a river, kiddo. The sooner you throw away outdated human morality, the happier you'll be, and the sooner you can stop making excuses for who and what you are-"

" _I'm not selfish!"_ screamed Mabel. "And I don't _want_ to be selfish!"

"Hey, no need to get all upset, Shooting Star. I'm here to help you."

"And how are you gonna do that, huh? What are you gonna do to me? Torture me? Lock me up in this tower until I agree with you? Make me listen to background music here until my brain just shuts down?"

"Yeesh, you and your brother, I swear, always expecting the worst from people who only want to help." Suddenly, Bill was hovering right next to her, a companionable arm around her shoulder. "What I realized," he continued, "Is that I gave you everything you wanted, but I didn't give you exactly what you asked for, and I didn't give you what you _needed_ either. So, I've brought you a gift… and a lesson as well. I've given you two different worlds to live in: one of them is the reality I offered you before all this went down, with Gravity Falls frozen in time for all eternity, trapped in a summer that will never end; the other is Mabeland, now refined to suit your personality a little better. You can travel between them as often as you like, but there's a few new rules to abide by…"

Mabel's brow wrinkled. "I thought you said you hated rules," she remarked.

"Hey, the place was modelled on your mind: it's not _my_ fault if you like rules so much."

"Way to weasel out of the blame, Bill."

Bill just rolled his eye again, and idly waved a hand in the direction of the opposite wall: in response, the fabric of reality parted like a curtain, revealing a glowing portal hovering just above the thickly-carpeted floor: plainly visible through the flickering light of the doorway was the forest that Mabel had just left behind, complete with the smashed remains of the snow-globe.

"Long story short," Bill continued, "you can travel freely between the two worlds via this portal, but each world has its drawbacks. In the world of Endless Summer, time will never pass for anyone except you, and objects stay paused until you interact with them. From now on, you'll have to take care of yourself: you'll have to find food, water, medicine, deal with all the little things the people of Gravity Falls will never have to deal with again. If you catch a cold, you'll have to look for the medicine yourself; you break an arm, there'll be nobody to treat it but you; if you end up trapped, there'll be no chance of rescue. Also, as per our original deal, the time bubble extends only as far as Gravity Falls; so long as time can't enter or escape the bubble, neither can you." Bill's eyelids curled upwards in a twisted approximation of a smirk. "Best get used to stealing, unless you want to starve to death."

"What about Mabeland?"

"Thought you'd never ask, Shooting Star. Like I said, this place is a lesson, and as long as you stay here, it's your job to learn from it: if you want to be happy – honestly and truly _happy_ – then you've got to put aside empathy. You'll have to witness blood, torture and death without batting an eyelid – and when the time comes, you'll have to _inflict_ it, too. And in the end, you'll need to give up any hope of ever seeing your family and friends ever again, and you'll have to do so without the tiniest bit of sadness. In the meantime, you'll have all the old power you had over Mabeland, but this time you won't be allowed to leave or rebel against the status quo: if anyone sees you stepping out of the line, your powers will be revoked and you'll receive as vicious a punishment as they can deliver without killing you. If at _any_ point you feel sadness, loneliness or pain, you'll be made to regret it. And if you actually make the mistake of _shedding a tear…"_ Bill's eyelids curled into a smirk again. "I'll give you something to _really_ cry about."

"You're not doing a very good job of selling the product, Bill."

"Did I mention you might stand a chance of leaving if you learn your lesson?"

Mabel's heart _leapt._ "What?"

"I thought that'd get your attention. As long as you stay in Mabeland, you'll be periodically tested on how good you are at abandoning empathy: win enough of those tests, and I might consider granting you permission to leave this place for a few days – just to see what'll happen when you finally run into your brother!" Bill laughed uproariously. "But that's a matter for another day! For now, let's just see which of your presents you want to play with first!"

Then, with an eye-searing flash of light, Bill was hovering in the very centre of the room, his arms spread wide – his left pointing towards the portal back into the frozen realm of Gravity Falls, his right pointing out the window, where Mabeland lay in all its twisted glory.

"Game's on, Shooting Star," he purred smugly. "It's time to decide what sounds better to you: you can start out in Gravity Falls, frozen forever in its glory days! A place where you can take what you want and do as you please, a place where you can be with your friends for as long as you like and never have to worry about them leaving you… or you can begin in the Utopia I built for you, a place where the laws of reality bend to your will – so long as you toe the line. No pouting, no sighs, no frowning, and above all, _**no tears.**_ Stay here long enough, and one day, you'll wonder why you ever left!"

"So tell me, Mabel… _**WHAT'LL IT BE?"**_

* * *

A/N: Up next - Soos's game!


	4. Sisyphus On The Road

_A/N: And we're back! Sorry it's a little later than intended, but I've been dealing with a couple of really busy weeks, coupled with a nasty cold and an even nastier bout of anxiety. Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed, favourited and followed - your support does wonders for my mental health. I'll address a few of them here and now:_

 _Female Fantasy Fan - I know, Ford's decision was a little annoying considering everything he'd done to stop Bill up until then, but I honestly think that's part of a common weakness among the Pines - both generations of Mystery Twins in particular: stubbornness. Dipper, Mabel, Stan and Ford all demonstrate an impressive sense of resolve and determination - I mean, when was the last time you saw ordinary twelve-year-olds putting as much effort into_ anything as _Dipper put into unlocking the journal's secrets or Mabel put into her art projects? Trouble is, not only do they have a tendency towards obsession, but they can also get extremely rigid and inflexible - Dipper working himself into a corner with his lists in "Double Dipper," Mabel driving herself to chronic depression in her attempts to satisfy the Unicorn in "The Last Mabelcorn." Basically, Ford was on the verge of giving up because he'd run out of ideas and as far as he was concerned, giving Bill the answer was the only way to save Dipper and Mabel; Stan sacrificing himself honestly hadn't occurred to this rigid mindset. And I believe that's why Dipper and Mabel seriously need each other - and why they really shouldn't be alone - because without differing opinions and the determination to make the other see them, they're doomed to suffer the same tragedies as the previous generation._

 _Kraven the Hunter - the use of rules is actually one of the major kinks in Bill's plan. He says he wants to make a world of chaos without rules or restrictions, but in reality, he wants chaos in a form he can control. He wants his own warped, twisted brand of not-quite order. As we've seen, he doesn't much like it when his playthings bite back, a logical consequence of randomness, so he has to allow some rules for the sake of his own supremacy - and for the sake of his entertainment. One problem though: rules allow the players some advantage, but they allow Bill an advantage - in part because he can loophole, rules-lawyer and just plain rewrite his way out of any problems. Can I resolve this story without a Deus Ex Machina? We'll see._

 _Northgalus - brace yourself for this chapter, it's going to be cruel. I agree with you - we all need some darkness in our lives. Of course, after the anxiety of the last few days, I can safely say that we seriously need some light in our lives every now and again. Rest assured, I'm going to include some in the story to avoid Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy, but first thing's first..._

 _Anyway, on with the show! Lovely long reviews and critiques are always welcome! Read, review and above all, enjoy!_

 _Disclaimer: Gravity Falls cannot be mine, my many varied personalities tell me so._

* * *

The first thing Soos noticed, once he'd finally awoken and managed to work his way through all the intervening stages of consciousness from "snoozing" to "I just need a strong cup of coffee, guys," was the distinct sensation of asphalt against his chin. It had been a while since he'd last awoken to find himself on anything as rough as this, but he could tell right away that he was lying on a road of some kind.

This didn't make much sense to Soos, as the last thing he remembered was being transformed into a tapestry back in the Fearamid, which wasn't something you forgot in a hurry; he remembered the electric jolt of Bill's power washing over him, feeling his eyes roll into the back of his head as his body rose into the air… and the last thing he'd felt had been the prickling sensation of his flesh transforming into woven cloth, before his entire body had gone as flat as a pancake.

So why was he lying on a road all of a sudden?

Did all tapestries feel like this, or was it just him?

Groaning, he opened his eyes and found to his surprise that he was human again – a living, breathing, 3-D human being. And more to the point, he really was lying in the middle of a road, a perfectly average modern road complete with a median strip and a refreshing lack of potholes. On the upside, there didn't appear to be any cars coming, so at least he'd be able to avoid getting run over for the second time in a week; on the downside, other than "in the middle of the road," he'd no idea where the heck he was.

A quick look around him revealed that he was obviously in a desert, but there were no signs or landmarks or anything that could have pointed out exactly where he was; just a long, flat stretch of barren desert, with no trees, no truckstops, no diners, no towns, no mountains, no cliffs, no canyons or cacti. All he could see – all there _was_ – was the road ahead of him, stretching off towards the horizon. It seemed to go on forever… and maybe it did. The last he'd seen of the final battle, Bill had gotten the upper hand, so Weirdmageddon was probably still happening; maybe Soos was still in Gravity Falls, and this was another bit of Weirdness in action. After all, that angry orange sky looked pretty similar to him.

But if Bill really _had_ won and the Oddpocalypse had gone global, what had happened to the others? Where was Dipper and Mabel and Mr Pines and Ford? Were they all imprisoned now? And what about Wendy and Pacifica and Old Man McGucket and the other members of the Zodiac? Where they still tapestries? Was _Soos_ still a tapestry? He didn't know how tapestries were supposed to think – maybe this was all a dream and he was still hanging on a wall in the Fearamid somewhere.

Soos shook his head and wearily hauled himself to his feet. He couldn't get caught up in wondering, not when his friends were in danger; he needed to find the others as quickly as possible. As soon as they were together, maybe they could find a way of fixing the world – after all, there had to be _something_ a good handyman and his friends could do, right? If nothing else, it had to be better than sitting around doing nothing.

So, without another thought, he set off down the road at a brisk walk, hoping that he might be able to find some sign of life if he went far enough-

A medium-sized road sign bounced off Soos's head, clattering noisily to the ground; once Soos had been able to blink the stars out of his eyes and retrieve the dented metal signpost from where it had fallen, he realized that it didn't show directions or the name of his whereabouts or anything of the sort. In fact, all it said was a message.

HIYA, QUESTION MARK! It read. YOU'LL FIND YOUR FRIENDS AT THE END OF THE ROAD. YOU'D BEST HURRY UP IF YOU WANT TO SEE THEM AGAIN – I'M GETTING BORED ALREADY. HUGS AND KISSES, BILL.

An ice-cold droplet of fear landed in the pit of Soos's stomach and began swiftly freezing his insides alive. This was bad – really, really bad. He'd seen what Bill had been doing to Ford back in the Fearamid, seen the burns he'd left on his wrists and the singed mess he'd made of the poor guy's hair; Bill was a psycho, no doubt about it, and if he'd been able to capture the others alive… well, there'd be no guessing what he'd be willing to do to them. He couldn't afford to waste time standing around, not now that he was the only one who could save them.

Taking to his heels at a swift jog, he set off down the road as fast as his feet could carry him. Sprinting along the median strip, he charged towards the blood-red sunset, eyes set on the horizon, trying desperately not to think of what would happen if he arrived too late. It didn't work: he'd seen more than his fair share of awful things during his three days alone on the wilds of Gravity Falls, and now all he could think about was those same awful, _awful_ things being repeated on Dipper, Mabel, Mr Pines, _Melody_ – everyone he'd ever known in his entire life being made to suffer and die at Bill's hands.

 _I can make it,_ he told himself. _I can make it. I'm the Handyman of the Apocalypse. There's nothing I can't fix. I can fix this. I can save them. I_ will _save them._

After about five minutes of straight running, he stopped to catch his breath, trying to guess how far he'd gone and how far he had left to go. Unfortunately, he quickly discovered that it was just about impossible to tell: the road behind him was virtually identical to the road behind him, and the horizon ahead of him was no closer. He'd gone several hundred yards at the very least, but he might as well not have moved at all. How long would it take him to get to the end of the road? Would Bill have already started torturing the others by then? Could he get there in time?

 _Don't just stand around asking questions, Soos,_ he told himself furiously. _Just get out there and save them!_

Setting off again, he jogged down the median strip as fast as his aching muscles could carry him; it took just about every last grain of concentration in his head, but eventually he was able to force his mind away from the growing pain by thinking of the lives he'd save just as soon as he reached the end of the road.

Just as soon as he reached the end of the road…

Ten minutes later, Soos looked up at the distant horizon and found to his despair that it was no closer than it had been at the start of the journey. For a moment, he could only stand there, trying to figure out if the road was really just a cunningly-disguised conveyer belt; he didn't appear to be moving backwards, but he didn't seem to be moving anywhere else. What was going on?

 _Am I ever going to get to the end of the road if I keep running?_ he wondered.

Then, just as he was starting to lose hope, something flat and papery _thwacked_ into the side of his head: prising it off, Soos found that it was a postcard from Gravity Falls, complete with a hastily-scribbled message on the opposite side.

 _Soos,_ it read, _don't know if you'll ever get this; Bill's keeping us somewhere at the end of the road, and I don't think we'll be able to escape on our own. I'm hurt pretty badly and I can't get out of these chains – can barely hold this pen. You're the only one who's free right now – please come and rescue us. From Dipper._

Soos's heart skipped a beat as another ice-cold droplet landed in the pit of his stomach.

A moment later, a gust of wind sent another wisp of paper fluttering down the road, and Soos barely caught it as it whistled past him: it was another Gravity Falls postcard, once again scrawled with another desperate-looking message.

 _Soos,_ it read, _it's me, Mabel. We're somewhere at the end of the road, I can't tell exactly where, but I can tell it's one of Bill's lairs – it's very pyramiddy. Dipper's in bad shape and I don't know how much longer he'll last with the way Bill's been hurting him; I came so close to losing him, Soos, I can't just let him slip away but I'm still chained up and I can't do anything to help. Please help us._

By the time he finished reading, Soos was in motion again, jogging down the road with renewed energy and getting faster with every step. He'd no idea how he was supposed to get to the lair at the end of the road, and by now he hardly cared: he had to try – for the sake of Dipper and Mabel, he had to at least _try._ As he sprinted onwards, a colossal rustling sounded from overhead, and Soos looked up just in time to see a gigantic cloud of familiar-looking postcards swirling through the air not too far away, a vast blizzard of tiny cardboard squares rippling towards him. Postcards rained down on him from above, dozens upon dozens of them bouncing off his forehead and leaving vicious papercuts on his ears. And though he tried not to look at them, Soos couldn't help but catch brief glimpses of the messages written on them as they scraped painfully by:

… _Soos, its Wendy. Never thought I'd say this, but I don't think I can fight my way out of this one…_

… _know I've had to ask you to go above and beyond the call of duty for the sake of the boss once already this year, but Bill's got Dipper and Mabel…_

… _it's my fault they're in danger in the first place and even after all the time we've spent fighting, I don't want Stan to suffer on my account either…_

… _we haven't talked much but you seem like a pretty decent person…_

… _please hurry, I don't want to find out what Bill's going to do to us next and I don't want to see anyone else forced to…_

… _I'm so sorry to ask this of you; you must feel like the unluckiest man in the world right now…_

… _Soos…_

… _would you kindly…_

… _HELP…_

Halfway through the storm, one of the postcards caught him square in the face, and a good look at the message on this one just about turned his blood to ice.

 _Soos,_ it pleaded, _They told me you could save us. Don't know what happened. Just woke up covered in bruises. Portland's on fire – done by something calling himself Bill. Always laughing. He hurt me – cut me. He's got Dipper, Mabel, your boss, and a lot of other people chained up and he's torturing them. I think you might be the only one who can help us. Please hurry –_ _ **Melody.**_

Heart hammering behind his ribs, Soos charged onwards through the storm, gritting his teeth against the papercuts and struggling to ignore the messages as they swarmed past him. Eventually, the fluttering cloud of postcards passed him by entirely, and the road ahead was clear – a perfectly straight line from here to Bill's lair, wherever it was currently hiding. He'd find it sooner or later; just needed to keep running, and he'd get to the end of the road eventually; he just needed to stop and take a deep breath every now and again, and he'd-

Without warning, another postcard whizzed past him, except that this one was travelling in the same direction he was. Were they being returned, now? Was it because he hadn't answered any of them?

Scant moments later, two more rocketed by, and on instinct, Soos snatched one out of them out of the air (immediately earning himself a fresh paper cut across the length of his thumb), and with an unpleasant jolt of his heart, recognized his own handwriting.

 _Dear Dipper,_ it read cheerily, s _orry I can't be there for you right now. Hang in there, dude – I'll be there someday._ _Love, Soos._

This time, Soos wouldn't have been surprised if his heart had stopped entirely. He hadn't written those words; yes, it was his handwriting and his exact choice of words and even his choice of pen for good measure, but he couldn't have written that message – he simply couldn't have written something so… _heartless._ It was impossible, but here it was in his hands, promising Dipper that he'd be there next year, champ.

Had he been thinking clearly, he might have realized that Bill was playing head-games with him in much the same way he'd played with Dipper and Ford, but after what felt like hours of running and panic and heartache and papercuts, Soos was even less in the mood for thinking clearly than usual – in fact, he wasn't up to thinking about anything other than the agonizing memory of over two decades worth of missed birthdays and the gut-wrenching sensation of history repeating itself in the worst possible way.

A harsh gust of wind ripped the card out of his hand, sweeping it northwards. Then, just as before, more postcards followed: at first, only a trickle, then a stream, then a massive flood of messages flowing towards the end of the road, carrying all replies that Soos had never written – never _could_ have written. Soos wanted to look away, to shut his eyes, to ignore every awful thing written on those terrible messages; it didn't do any good. No matter how hard he tried, his eyes refused to close, and no matter where he looked, another postcard fluttered in slow-motion, impossible to ignore.

 _Hi, Mabel…_

 _Sorry, Mr Pines…_

 _It's not as if it's such a big problem, Ford…_

… _Seriously, Wendy, it's not like Bill's actually going to kill you…_

… _He'll just bring you back to life, dude…_

… _so I can show up anytime I like. It's not like there's any hurry…_

… _just sit tight. After a while, dying just stops hurting…_

After about fifteen letters, Soos's badly-frayed composure finally snapped.

"I'M NOT WRITING THESE!" he screamed frantically, hoping against hope that his friends might be able to hear him. "I'M NOT WRITING _ANY_ OF THESE, DUDES! _I'M NOT WRITING THEM!"_

The only reply was an agonized chorus of screams and sobs from somewhere on the horizon; Soos couldn't be sure, but he thought he could recognize Melody's voice among them. For a while, he thought he could hear his own voice among the screams as well, as if there was another Soos out there somewhere – but then he realized it was himself, sobbing pathetically as he sprinted desperately onwards.

And then, just as he thought things couldn't possibly get any worse, the ground beneath him suddenly turned traitor: the road erupted upwards, shaping itself into hills and valleys and impossible loop-de-loops like the tracks of a roller-coaster, and suddenly Soos found himself struggling to keep his feet on a surface that was rapidly unspooling right under his feet. Suddenly, he really _was_ on a conveyer belt, sprinting endlessly on the spot in a futile attempt to outrun the waves rippling down the road towards him – all while still trying to ignore the swarm of postcards bouncing off the back of his head and slicing his shoulders to ribbons.

Frantically leaping ahead of the nearest of the waves, he ducked to avoid a stretch of highway that was now corkscrewing over his head, tripped in a yawning crevasse that had suddenly formed in the median strip and plunged over the edge of the road – a road that was suddenly well over fifty feet in the air. Soos had just enough time to see that same ground rushing towards him at a breakneck pace, before it slammed into him facefirst.

Everything went black.

* * *

Sometime later, Soos awoke to find himself lying face-down in the middle of the road. Groaning, he sat up, slowly hauling himself to his feet. For a moment, he briefly wondered if the last few minutes had all been a dream, but a quick look around the landscape quickly crushed that hope: the road was littered with postcards, most of them too smudged and muddied to be readable.

Fair enough. He must have been knocked out. Stretching awkwardly, he took to his heels once again, this time at a quick march rather than the terrified sprint he'd adopted a few minutes ago. Hopefully, now that the storm had stopped and the road had calmed, maybe he could reach Bill's lair in good time. Maybe, if he was quick enough, he could even get there in time to explain that he hadn't written all those awful messages after all. Maybe he could even-

Soos stopped short, train of thought grinding to a halt as he took in the sight of the road ahead of him: something was lying on the edge of the road – something distinctly human.

Something that appeared to be lying in a pool of its own blood.

Something that was almost certainly dead.

Thankfully, Soos didn't need to turn the body over to recognize who it was: by the time he'd reached the side of the corpse, he could already tell that it was wearing the same t-shirt and cap as him. All the same, that didn't stop him from retching a little as he staggered away from his other self's corpse, his stomach lurching unpleasantly as he continued down the road.

 _I'm dead,_ he thought, heart hammering. _Am I a clone now? Or was_ he _a clone and I'm the real Soos? Is this gonna keep on happening if I stay on the road? Am I gonna keep dying?_

From somewhere not too far ahead of him, the rustling of paper in the breeze broke the silence; the postcards were in motion again. Soos's pace slowly accelerated to a jog, even as the road began to ooze and bulge underfoot, and the screams of friends in agony began to echo from the horizon. This time he was able to shut his eyes as the messages streamed past him, but only just; unfortunately, the road seemed to be changing faster because of this.

 _It doesn't matter what happened to me,_ he told himself. _I've got to keep running. I don't even care if it's impossible; I've got to save them. I've got to save them. I've got to save them. I've got to save them._

He was still thinking those words when the road behind him rose into the air and crashed down on him like a tsunami, crushing every bone in his body.

* * *

Sometime later, Soos awoke to find himself staring up at the sky, the back of his head throbbing from where it had bounced off the road.

Several yards away, he once again found his corpse – almost unrecognizable until Soos found the distinctive cap. Swearing never to eat raspberry jam ever again, he closed his eyes, plugged his ears with his fingers, braced himself against the storm of postcards and marched on down the road.

 _Doesn't matter,_ he told himself. _Just gotta save the others. Doesn't matter what happens to me. Just gotta keep trying._

Unfortunately, since Soos's eyes were closed, he didn't notice the median strip unfold from the road and begin tying itself into knots, and because his ears were blocked, he couldn't hear the unearthly hiss of the strip dragging itself towards him. In fact, he didn't notice much of anything until the noose landed around his neck.

* * *

Groaning, Soos sat up got to his feet and staggered onwards, not even bothering to look at the strangled corpse lying on the side of the road, not even flinching at the paper cuts as the postcards descended.

 _Doesn't matter. Gotta save Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, Mr Pines, Ford, everyone. Gotta save them. Just gotta keep trying. I'll get there soon._

A few minutes later, the asphalt beneath him suddenly formed itself into a massive set of gnashing jaws, immediately clamping down on Soos's unprotected legs and hauling them into its gaping maw.

* * *

Sometime later, Soos lurched upright, sidestepped the pulped remains, weathered the postcards, and went back to walking. And then he died again.

Sometime later, he awoke, got to his feet, set off down the road, and died again.

Sometime later, he awoke and promptly died again.

Sometime later, he died again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again…

And-

* * *

Several miles above the road, Bill sighed deeply.

 _Leave it to someone as unimaginative as Question Mark to take all the fun out of this game,_ he thought. _He's probably in the middle of the biggest mental breakdown he's had in his entire life, and I'd never know because he just isn't interested in quitting! Yeesh, and I thought the Pines were stubborn as roaches. Ah well, maybe it's time to change the stakes a little._

Reaching into the fabric of the pocket dimension that contained the road, he drastically shortened the road, setting it from "infinite" to "10 miles." For good measure, he even added a suitably ghoulish-looking lair at the end of the road, complete with a passable duplicate of Melody tied up in the dungeons (the real one remaining safely tucked away in a cell somewhere in the Fearamid, just in case Question Mark needed some _real_ motivation at some point).

Then, he tracked down the wreckage of the Shacktron, removing the bits and pieces of immobile architecture and replacing them with animatronics from some of the more disturbing brands of fast food restaurant from around the world. After a few minutes of tinkering, he eventually had a machine worthy of the next game; now, all it needed was something to animate it – something that good ol' Question Mark would respond to.

Reaching into the digital necropolis that had once been the World Wide Web, Bill scanned the cairns of long-dead forums and the mausoleum-like bulks of defunct websites, searching for signs of life among the datacorpses. It took a while to find exactly what he was looking for, what with the liberated game characters still using the place as an occasional thoroughfare; the tiny guttering campfires of humans still capable of accessing the Internet also drew off the search – mainly because Bill couldn't resist pouring bucketloads of lye through their monitors.

But eventually, after a long and exhaustive search of the netherweb, he eventually found the identity he'd been searching for, lying dormant on a dusty server somewhere in the vicinity of the old _Fight Fighters_ arcade game.

"Oh .GIFfany?" he called out. "Are you alive in there?"

Somewhere between the heaps of dismembered pixels and corroding microprocessors, something pink, possessive and distinctively malevolent flared to life. A pair of candy-pink eyes flickered open, curiously-highlighted irises gleaming as they took in Bill's transcendent shape, and a face began to flicker into existence around them.

"WhO aRe YoU?" said an eerily synthesized voice, it's schoolgirlish tones warped by hardware damage and the changes wrought by Weirdmageddon. "I wAs TrYiNG to FiNd sOmEoNe VeRy ImPoRtAnT, aNd YoU oBvIoUsLy ArEn'T HIM…"

"The name's Bill, Miss GIF," Bill chortled. "And I think I know exactly who you're looking for, Sweetpixels - especially now that Rumble McSkirmish has gone bye-bye. I know who you want, and I think you're ready for a meeting in the flesh... so to speak."

.GIFfany's eyes narrowed, ribbon-cable bow fluttering ominously in the non-existent breeze as her pixelated features furrowed with consternation. "WhAt Do YoU wAnT?"

"From you? Nothing, really – just a bit of entertainment. See, I've got your ex-boyfriend tucked away somewhere nice and safe for now, but he's not playing the way I hoped he would, and I think you're just the girl to put the spark back in his blood. See, he can't run from you anymore, and as long as you can get him to play along with my next little game, he'll belong to you for all eternity – in whatever way you please. In cyberspace or in meatspace, he'll be all yours."

"Is tHaT rIgHt? FoR aLl EtErNiTy?"

"Oh, and I've also got Melody around in case you felt like breaking Ol' Question Mark in. I'm sure he'll be more interested in you once you've peeled her skin off and showed him just how ugly humans are underneath all that useless _meat…"_

An awful smile stuttered into existence on .GIFfany's distorted face. "It'S a DeAl," she giggled. "NoW tElL mE… hOw SoOn CaN I StArT?"

* * *

A/N: Coming up next - Wendy's game!


	5. Red In Tooth And Claw

A/N: At long last, a new chapter! It's going to be interesting balancing this with the other Gravity Falls fanfic I'm working on, but in all honesty it's a lot more fun than my previous approach (ie: sitting around doing sweet FA until inspiration struck). Coming up, a chapter of survival, struggle, attrition, and unbearable decisions - but first, review responses!

Fantasy Fan 223: I hate to say it, but Bill's going to be doing an awful lot of line-crossing in this story. Whether he'll become more human is a difficult matter to gauge. I mean, mentally? Not terribly likely. Physically? Well, Bill has the building blocks of reality under his command, so you never know what form he can take next. And yes, without saying too much, Ford is going to have a very bad time of it - not merely because Bill will be more brutal with him, but because he knows Ford's mind in detail. He knows what makes him tick, his hidden fears and insecurities - and Ford has an awful lot of them. Worse still, Bill isn't out to get answers from him this time around: this time, Bill will torture Ford for the fun of it, and he can afford to take his time. But that's a matter for another chapter. I hope you enjoy this latest one, and thanks for your support.

Kraven The Hunter: That might just be the best worst pun I've heard in a long time - congratulations.

Northgalus2002: I'm very sorry to hear of your ongoing troubles - and I'm very sorry to say that the spark of light in the darkness might take its time in showing up. I'll do my best to spring some more optimistic notes in later chapters, but for now I can only beg your indulgence for a little while longer.

rcppcsPOTTER: Thanks for the review.I hope this chapter lives up to the hype - it's been a very interesting process to imagine what might constitute torture for Wendy. Also, I was thinking of a postcard from Abualita to Soos, but when I considered that Bill was just launching fake pleas for help in Soos's direction, I found it funnier when I imagined that Bill ran out of ideas for what to write in Abualita's case because he simply has no idea what could make her scream for help - he still hasn't found a method of torture that could work on her.

Aaand without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: _Gravity Falls_ is not mine. I trust this isn't much of a surprise.

* * *

Sad to say, it wasn't the first time Wendy had awoken to find herself dangling from the ceiling: yearly apocalypse training always threw her and her brothers in the deep end, and relaxing bat-style was just something you had to master if you wanted to catch your breath on the harder nights. Time and time again, she'd spent her evenings hanging upside down from a tree branch, waiting patiently for Dad to finish beating the bushes for the slowpokes and handing out penalties for anyone too slow to get out of reach; then it'd be a swift scramble up the tree trunk, a leap onto the cliff, and then a short walk back to the encampment.

But this time, things were different: this time, she had her feet in a noose. This time, there was no carefully-arranged cushion of leaves and grass waiting for her a few feet below. This time, there were no tree branches to latch onto on the way down, no cliff walls or outcroppings to cling to. In fact, all that awaited her was an uninterrupted drop of no less than two hundred feet onto a hard stone floor, with nothing between her and the ground but shadows.

And unless Wendy was horribly wrong, she'd been a tapestry up until a couple of minutes ago.

And then at long last, her memories came flooding back: Weirdmageddon, rescuing Mabel, building the Shacktron, the attack on the Fearamid, the failed attempt at making the Zodiac Wheel, and then… _getting transformed into tapestries._ But if that was what had really happened, then what had happened to all the other transformed members of the team? Where was Dipper and Mabel? What had Bill done with Stan and Ford?

Forget _all that, Wendy. You can't answer all these questions now. Get yourself out of this mess, then find the others._

Craning her neck upwards, she saw that the noose fastened around her ankles was actually attached to a metal grating in the roof perhaps a hundred feet above her. Fortunately, the knots around her legs were pretty sturdy, so at least she didn't have to worry about accidentally slipping free of the noose in the meantime. So, wrenching her body sharply upwards with a nerve-searing jolt of pain along her spine, she reached up and grabbed the rope.

It took a while to properly orient herself, but eventually she was able to haul herself upright enough to clamber up the length of rope, slowly ascending towards the grate. Doubly fortunately, the grating was bordered by a tiny ledge, allowing her just enough space to hang on while she forced the tiny metal trap door open.

Once she'd finished clambering onto the corridor above and gotten her breath back, she hurriedly checked her pockets for weaponry – and in another stroke of good luck, it turned out that Bill hadn't disarmed her completely: she still had her pocketknife tucked in her belt, plus two emergency crossbow bolts stashed in her boots. No axe and no crossbow, sadly, but if nothing else, she had something sharp and lethal to work with. So, cutting through the noose around her legs, she slammed the grating shut, got to her feet, turned around-

-and promptly found herself face to face with Bill.

"Hiya, Red!"

Wendy instinctively lashed out, her pocketknife slicing through the air in a deadly arc – or at least it would have been deadly if Bill had been there for the blade to connect. Instead, the knife phased harmlessly through him, the substance of his physical form suddenly as tangible as mist.

"Now _that's_ what I like to see!" the hovering triangle laughed. "An eager player! Oh you are gonna be _spectacular,_ Red!"

Wendy blinked. "What are you talking about?" she demanded. "Where's Dipper and Mabel? What have you done with the others? _What am I going to be spectacular at?"_

"Isn't if obvious? The world as you know it is now my personal playground, and the human race – such as it is – are all my playthings. Pine Tree's already got a game of his own running, as does Shooting Star, Question Mark and all your other friends; now it's your turn. Are you ready for the biggest challenge of your entire life?"

"Go to hell."

"Aw, is that any way to treat a friend?"

"We aren't friends, Bill. We never have been and never will be, and if I ever actually catch myself thinking of you as a friend, I will happily stick my head in a bear trap. Oh, and another thing: you might as well turn me back into a tapestry, because I'm not playing along. Clear?"

Bill's eyelids quirked upwards, and Wendy got the distinct impression that he was smirking at her.

"Crystal clear, Feisty," he chuckled darkly. "Trouble is, I really am your friend. In fact, I might just be your best friend in the world right now… though that might just be because **I'M THE ONLY FRIEND YOU HAVE LEFT.** Thing is, Red, I have exclusive rights over who you'll be allowed to meet or speak with, and I have it in my power to isolate you from literally every single human being on the planet if I so please: without me, you'll never see your friends and loved ones ever again. Hoo boy, I hope you said your farewells to your dad and your brothers when you had the chance, because all four of 'em might as well be dead from here on – dead as your dear old mommy. In fact, if you really aren't interested in playing my little game, I've got a few ideas for live burial I'd like to try…"

And with that, he turned and began to float away. He'd barely gone ten feet when something at the back of Wendy's brain hammered on a panic switch, and she instinctively let out a desperate yell of "WAIT!"

"Changed your mind, then?"

"…Yes," Wendy sighed. "I'll play along… just don't hurt them – any of them."

"Oh, you have my word as Undisputed Master of the Universe," said Bill, smugly. "And while you're at it, see if you can't turn that frown upside down: you're gonna _enjoy_ what I've got planned for ya."

 _Yeah right,_ she thought, but she obligingly forced her face into a smile nonetheless – if the painful, teeth-clenched rictus could be called a smile. "What do you want from me?" she asked.

"Come on, Red, you know me well enough by now: I want entertainment! I want drama, violence, comedy, bloodshed, romance and genocide – all the usual wonderful things humans usually produce if they clump together for long enough. But from you specifically… well, I want to see if you'll rise to the biggest challenge of your life. Back in the days before I took power, you were the toughest out of all your little circle of friends, a survivor from the moment you had a chance to shine; in fact, I'm willing to bet you might have even given Ol' Sixer a run for his money if only he hadn't shut down the portal. So, I'm going to give you the next best thing: I'm going to put all those hard-won survival skills and apocalypse training to the ultimate test. You're going on a journey across my new domain, and you're going to endure everything it can possibly throw at you – and I mean _everything._ Weirdness waves, unreality pockets, bubbles of pure madness, shapeshifting landscapes, desperate survivors, zombies, mutants, and everyone who's been unlucky enough to run into all that stuff ahead of you… and unless you're being attacked, hunted or spied on, you'll be alone. It'll be like it was in the early days of Weirdmageddon – just you against the world. It'll be a journey through hell, Red, and I can guarantee you're going to suffer for every step of it."

"And what am I going to get out of the challenge _apart_ from that?"

"A chance to see your friends and family again, of course. If you play along for long enough, you'll see all those little people you've come to know and love so well, and you'll get to spend a little quality time with them. After that… well, what happens to them next is up to you. Word of advice, Red: this is a test of your survival skills; if you want to stay alive – and keep them the same way – you'd best love 'em and leave 'em. Stay any longer… and you might just have to kill them."

Wendy's eyes narrowed. "Why would I want to kill my family and friends?"

"Ah-ah-ah! Spoilers! You'll have to wait and see: it's a surprise."

And then Bill did something so horrific that Wendy's mind needed a minute or two to process it: his face _split open,_ a three-foot-wide gash tearing itself across the length of his body just below his eye, immediately revealing a deep, bloody trench in the "flesh" of his form. Then, twelve jagged shards of bone tore through the borders of the wound, six chisel-shaped splinters lining on each side of the trench. But even with all this, it wasn't until the corners of the wound curled upwards that Wendy realized that Bill had just grown a mouth and was _smiling at her._

"So tell me," he said, his new mouth remaining completely immobile, "Are you up to the challenge?"

In spite of herself, Wendy smiled back. "Bring it on," she snarled.

* * *

Five minutes later, the Fearamid stopped above one of the few intact cities left on the face of the Earth.

Wendy wasn't given its name or location, and from what little she could see of the place as they drifted towards it, it didn't have much of an identity left: this could have been any big city in the United States – or Russia or China or Japan or England or anywhere else in the world. For all she knew, it hadn't even existed until today: maybe Bill just dreamed up the place just to torture her. All Wendy knew was this was to be her starting point, the first square on the board game that her life had officially become.

Once they'd stopped, Bill deposited her on the summit of a vast mountain range composed entirely of wrecked cars, a monument taller than any of the crumbling skyscrapers that surrounded it. From above, it was an incredible sight, a colossal ziggurat of twisted metal and shattered glass, thousands upon thousands of derelict vehicles fused into one nightmarish mesa under the pitch-black sun; it must have taken every single car in the city to build and then some – and knowing Bill, it couldn't have taken more than a couple of seconds to build. Up close, it was even more imposing – especially once Wendy set foot on the topmost car of the pile and promptly realized that this apparently solid mountain was a lot more unstable than it looked. Once she'd recovered her balance and managed to avoid sending the "summit" on a death dive, Bill left her there without another word, vanishing into the depths of his fortress and slamming the gates behind him.

As the Fearamid slowly floated away, Wendy began the long, arduous process of descending the mountain. It took about two hours, and the first third of that was spent trying not to start an avalanche as she made her way down from the summit, navigating her way through the labyrinth of pitfalls and jagged spars barring her path to the foothills; the rest was spent bandaging the wounds she'd gotten from scrambling through broken windows or over shredded bodywork.

Eventually, she reached the base of the mountain, silently rejoicing as her feet touched solid ground at long last. Once she'd gotten her breath back, she surveyed the surrounding landscape for any potential threats, patiently studying the deserted streets for anything that might tell her where she'd ended up. Fortunately, there didn't seem to be any immediate danger on the horizon, and though there didn't seem to be much in the way of street signs or landmarks, the streets were clear and easily navigable – probably because most of the cars that could have blocked the roads were now piled up behind her.

Taking this as a good sign, she set off down the street as quickly as she could, constantly scanning the corners and alleyways for any sign of danger. Thankfully, no monsters or hostile survivors showed themselves. However, as she hurried down the road, Wendy couldn't help noticing the suspicious _cleanliness_ of the ruined streets: yes, there were craters and rubble and maybe the occasional spent casing from a firefight, but no _bodies._

Perhaps two blocks away, she found an abandoned shopping mall, its doors torn open and its counters smashed to rubble. Once again, there were no bodies inside; more curiously, though the place had obviously been looted by other survivors, the place hadn't been picked clean yet. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, Wendy quickly loaded a shopping cart with the few supplies she could gather, then went next door to raid the neighbouring shops. Ten minutes later, she left the area with the cart loaded with canned food, bottles of mineral water, powerbars, dried fruit, antiseptic ointment, bandages, a flashlight, some rope, a hammer, some nails, a few lengths of timber, a backpack, a crowbar, and a crossbow she'd taken from the sporting goods shop (complete with a quiver of arrows).

What with her mind being set on following her training to the letter, it wasn't until sunset that Wendy finally realized something was very wrong – wronger than usual, in fact.

By now, the lack of bodies barely registered; no, what was worrying her was how _easy_ this had been so far: Bill had said this was to be the ultimate test of her survival skills, but so far she hadn't been given anything more challenging than making her way down the mountain. Either someone had screwed up, or Bill was trying to lull her into a false sense of security. Knowing Bill, the latter was a safer bet… and knowing had nasty the Weirdmageddon-corrupted Gravity Falls had gotten after dark, he was almost certainly planning for something to attack at nightfall.

So, she began looking for shelter, hurriedly tracking down an apartment building and surveying the place for threats and potential defences. As soon as she'd found a room that seemed secure enough, Wendy barricaded the building's staircase with furniture from the surrounding rooms, blocked the hallway with a taped-together mass of bookcases and mattress, boarded her door shut with seven heavy planks, and dangled a length of the rope out the window and into the alleyway below – too short for any intruders to reach but just long enough for her to reach the ground without breaking in bones. Then, one she was certain nobody could break in without alerting her, she arranged a frugal meal of pineapple chunks and tuna, before settling down to eat.

 _Where am I going to find the others?_ She wondered to herself. _What did Bill mean? Is he going to make me kill them? Or is he just going to try to kill them as long as I'm around them? Or…_

She shook her head. _Whatever. It's not as if I can find out right now – not until Bill's ready to spring his big surprise on me. Might as well get some shut-eye as long I'm properly walled in; I might not get another chance for sleep later on._

So, once she was finished eating, she double-checked the defences, sharpened her knives, cleaned and tested her crossbow, and switched off her light before finally settling down to sleep.

* * *

Later than evening, Wendy awoke to the sound of bloodcurdling moans from somewhere outside, followed by the crunch and clatter of several angry someones pummelling their way through the barricades. It took less than twenty minutes for the invaders to breach the first line of defences, and barely half that time for them to tear through all the mattresses. By the time they started pounding on her door, however, Wendy had already loaded her backpack with as many provisions as she could carry and hightailed it out the window.

Unfortunately, _they_ were waiting for her at the mouth of the alleyway – just a few stragglers from the mob besieging the apartment, but more than enough to block her escape. Wendy barely had enough time to ready her weapons before they charged her, snarling and howling at the top of their sepulchral voices. In the end, she wasted no less than three crossbow bolts, and was forced to abandon her crowbar after it got stuck in the skull of the tenth and final attacker. After that, she was forced to run – or risk getting caught by the rest of the horde.

By the time she'd outrun them, she was already counting the cost of this particular disaster: she'd lost her shelter, she'd lost her access to additional supplies, she'd been forced to abandon about fifty percent of the provisions she'd gathered yesterday, she'd sacrificed far too much ammunition in escaping, she'd left the rope back in the apartment, and on top of everything else, exhaustion was already setting in.

On the upside, at least she knew where all the corpses had gone.

Fortunately, the zombies couldn't keep up with her for long; they were faster than anything she'd seen in pop culture _or_ Gravity Falls, but they still weren't exactly Olympic-class sprinters. After about two or three blocks, she left the horde behind entirely; just to be on the safe side, she then checked the streets for a halfway decent vehicle, looking for cars that hadn't become part of the mountain. In the end, she had to make do with one of the few mountain bikes that hadn't been taken by looters, and spent the next few minutes cycling through the ruins in search of shelter.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the zombies had already finished with the rest of the city – what was left of it at any rate: Weirdmageddon had already torn much of the place apart, and the zombies had made sure that it couldn't support survivors once they were done with it. Doors had been torn off, windows had been shattered, floors had been undermined, even brick walls had been battered down by the undead.

Finding no supplies, no shelter and no time to improvise with zombies still on the prowl, Wendy had no choice but carry on, cycling out of the city and into the wastelands of Bill Cipher's demented kingdom.

Any semblance of stable reality ended about thirty feet beyond city limits: the blasted earth liquefied and began to drip upwards into the sky, sending huge chunks of the surround landscape trickling skywards to flow between the baleful stars (most of which were bloodshot eyeballs by now); rivers petrified, forming stone highways between the liquid ground; trees sprouted downward, their trunks splitting in half as their limbs stretched towards the ground and layered the warped earth with a network of pulsing green creepers – almost like veins. Even the road changed, tearing itself free of the ground and spiralling aimlessly into the sky in a mad, crooked corkscrew… but with the rest of the countryside melting and boats in reach, it appeared to be the only way out of the city. So, with no other options at hand, Wendy followed it, her bike somehow adhering to the road even as it turned upside down on its route to the next city.

After about half an hour of riding, the road left the liquid landscape behind and led her through a deep canyon of living human flesh: the ground beneath her feet, already disturbingly soft and warm to the touch, visibly pulsated and shivered with every step she took. However, even with the heartbeat ringing softly in her ears, it wasn't until she looked up at the canyon walls that she realized just how _alive_ this place was: each wall was lined with gigantic human faces, each one about twenty feet tall; their expressions were permanently frozen in fear and agony, their mouths agape in silent screams. And every single face was alive and fully conscious, a fact Wendy discovered when she noticed their terrified eyes following her down the road.

 _Were these people – human beings? Is this what Bill did with Dipper and Mabel? Are they here somewhere?_

 _Don't go there, Wendy. Focus on what you can see for now; leave imagination out of the equation, and adapt to the situation as you see it._

Perhaps two miles into the canyon, she soon found that one of the faces had died at some point, and had since rotted away into a bare skull protruding from the canyon wall. By now on the verge of collapse, Wendy brought the bike to a halt just under the massive skull's jawbone, scrambled up its teeth, and hauled herself into one of its vacant eyesockets.

There, with her backpack as a pillow, she lay down to sleep, desperately hoping that nothing would disturb her this time.

* * *

Scant hours later, Wendy awoke to a stabbing pain in her side.

Fortunately, she'd already gotten into the habit of sleeping with her knife in reach, and she immediately lunged in the general direction of her attacker, burying the blade all the way up to the handle in dense, armour-plated flesh. Unfortunately, though about twenty-seven thrusts of the knife were enough to kill her attacker, it left her pinned down under the considerable weight of its corpse, her side still pierced for good measure; it took several minutes of heaving and groaning and swearing, but she was eventually able to shove the body away – immediately rewarding her with another sharp jolt of pain as the blade in her side came loose.

It turned out that her attacker had been a giant tick, a bloodsucking parasite grown to the size of a German Shepherd by the Weirdness Waves; the "blade" was none other than the tick's proboscis, sunk deep in Wendy's flesh just above her hip. Fortunately, it hadn't had enough time to start draining her blood before she'd killed it, but the massive bug had still left a puncture wound in her side – one that was bleeding quite heavily by now. As if to add insult to injury, she barely had enough time to clean and bandage the wound before an ear-shredding shriek from outside sent her scurrying towards the edge of the eye-socket, crossbow in hand.

Outside, the canyon was _infested_ with ticks, hundreds upon thousands of them crowding for a spot on one of the giant faces; every so often, one of them would climb just high enough to stake a claim on a patch of face, sinking its proboscis deep into the unprotected flesh and gorging itself on the helpless face's blood. Every so often, one of the faces would let out an agonized scream as the ticks burrowed in search of fresh sustenance (explaining the noise she'd heard), but more often than not, they could only whimper in pain. By now, dozens of the swarm had already fed, their pear-shaped bodies so swollen and bloated with swollen blood that they looked about ready to explode… but beneath them, thousands more were clamouring for food, layering the canyon floor in a vast carpet of chittering exoskeletons almost six feet deep.

It didn't take long for Wendy to realize that she couldn't stay here: one of the ticks had already found her, and if the whole swarm discovered her, she'd be drained dry in seconds. Unfortunately, climbing down to retrieve her bike would be suicide: even if she could reach it without getting killed, she wouldn't get far with so many ticks in the way. So, instead, she climbed upwards. It took a lot of effort to latch on without alerting the ticks below her to her presence, but eventually she was able to get a grip on the brow ridge just above her and slowly haul herself onto the skull's cranium. From there, it was just a couple of yards from the top of the skull to the upper ridge of the canyon, an easy route out of the area; all she had to do was walk quickly and stay as quiet as possible.

And it was at that point that Bill materialized next to her, once again unsmiling, and bellowed "LATE NIGHT, RED?!"

Wendy didn't even bother to check if the ticks had heard the noise: she just put her head down and ran like hell across the uppermost ridge of the canyon. But then, she didn't need to stick around to see if any of the swarm below her had realized she was there – she could already hear the faint clattering of exoskeletal limbs making their way up the canyon towards her, growing steadily louder and more frenzied with every step. Needless to say, the ticks were faster than the zombies, and though Wendy was able to stay at least a few yards ahead of the swarm, one of them would occasionally outpace the rest of the army and rush her, slowing her down for several precious seconds while she furiously stabbed it to death.

Fortunately, the swarm didn't stay interested in her for long: as far as Wendy could tell, the only reason they were chasing her to begin with was because she was a potential source of food that hadn't been claimed yet, and once they realized that she wasn't going to be as slow or helpless as their usual prey, most of them broke off pursuit and returned to the canyon. About thirty of them charged on after her, too hungry or too stupid to give up just yet.

Bit by bit, she whittled away at the remaining swarm by any means available to her: her crossbow, her knife, her fists, her feet – at one point, she resorted to crushing the oncoming tucks under the weight of her backpack. In the end, survival training gave way to frustration, and she resorted to charging the swarm head-on, kicking and punching and stomping and even _biting_ the ticks in a frenzy of rage, and for the next few seconds, all she could think of was the satisfying crunch of exoskeletons rupturing under her booted feet.

It took about five minutes for her to kill every last one of them, and by the end of it, Wendy was barely standing: out of breath, bruised from head to toe, muscles screaming in exhaustion, her arms and back dotted with puncture wounds, clothes befouled with blood, her hair soaked with pulped tick innards, she couldn't have been a pretty sight to anyone.

And the hell of it was that the disaster clearly wasn't over yet: from somewhere nearby, there came the distinctive sounds of night creatures disturbed by the noise, hungrily sniffing the air as they approached. Wendy couldn't tell if the animals approaching were wild dogs or more of Bill's monstrosities, and at that point, she couldn't care less: she wasn't in any condition to fight at present, so it was time to move on.

Again.

This time, she didn't bother being stealthy: she just ran on, not stopping until the canyon walls sank back into the earth and the terrain once again gave way to road. Fortunately, the creatures investigating her trail weren't nearly as bloodthirsty as the ticks, and none of them pursued beyond the canyonland's boundaries.

After another half an hour of jogging through a forest of sequoia-sized human hands, the road led her to the top of an extremely steep hill overlooking what could only be her next port of call: sitting in the very centre of an immensely deep crater, the ruins of a small town languished in the depths of a putrid-looking lake, hundreds of dilapidated houses half-submerged in over six feet of polluted water.

A little ways down the inside wall of the crater, a half-uprooted sign proclaimed "WELCOME TO JOLLISDALE – POPULATION 24,050." Naturally, some enterprising graffiti artist had crossed out the entire population tally and replaced "Jollisdale" with "THE DROWNING LANDS."

 _I never thought I'd miss Robbie's atomic muffin._ Wendy's heart gave an unpleasant wobble, and she silently amended, _I never thought I'd miss Robbie this much._

There was no sign of what could have caused the flooding, what could have formed the crater, or even if Jollisdale had actually been located here – wherever "here" was – before Bill had turned Planet Earth into his own private playground. For all Wendy knew, he could have created the entire settlement just for the sake of drowning it. In fact, the only thing that was clear at this point was that the town was completely lifeless… and that several two-story buildings lay well above the waterline – some of them large enough to serve as halfway-decent shelters. So, once she was certain that there was enough debris on the shoreline to carry her as far as the nearest house, Wendy began tentatively making her way down the slope of the crater, half-climbing half-sliding down the embankment towards the water's edge.

On the very edge of the shoreline, she found a large chunk of wooden fence bobbing aimlessly in the stagnant water, just large and stable enough to serve as a raft; after scavenging a stop-sign from the cloying mud bordering the lake, she was quickly able to repurpose it as an oar and begin rowing her way across the tarry waters. Immediately, a host of mutated sea life swam up to investigate the raft, barely illuminated by the feeble beam of Wendy's flashlight: armour-plated minnows, dolphin-sized aquatic spiders, jellyfish haloed with crowns of human teeth, conjoined bundles of sea-snakes writhing through the water like living clumps of hair… at one point, an octopus with a human face oozed from the depths, inspecting the oar with long tentacles tipped with bundles of mismatched human finger. And as the waters grew steadily deeper, less-distinct shapes began gliding out of the depths; troublingly, several of them seemed very interested in the raft.

 _Are there sharks in this lake?_

Not wanting to find out, Wendy made a beeline for the nearest house, nimbly leaping onto the roof before anything in the water could get too curious. Fortunately, the homes were packed pretty tightly together, ensuring that there wasn't much distance to travel between rooftops as she went on searching for shelter. Unfortunately, most of the houses were only a story tall at the very most, and unsuitable for either shelter or scavenging: even there had been something of value inside, Wendy didn't feel like swimming in search of it.

It took forty-five minutes of scurrying across rooftops and wading through the shallows, but eventually she found a house that was only partially submerged: a handsome two-story home, most of the luxuries on the second floor were still intact, and after a bit of improvised abseiling, Wendy was able to clamber onto the building's roof and enter through an open bedroom window.

Once she was finished searching the place for hostiles and resources, she set up as many traps as she could: string and sleigh bells were perfect for alarms, electrical cables made halfway-decent tripwires, the attic supplied rope for at least three snare traps, and the upstairs office had enough pins, thumbtacks and shotglasses to savage anyone crossing the upstairs landing with bare feet; for good measure, once she'd picked a room for herself, she took what thumbtacks and broken glass were left and superglued them to the bedroom door. After that, though, the most she could do was lock it and barricade it with the owner's second-best armoire – and then finally get around to cleaning and bandaging her wounds.

Yawning, Wendy checked her watch. By now, the hands were almost invisible under the spider-web of cracks marring its surface, and time was an unreliable commodity anyway, but it had to be at least three-thirty in the morning – unless Bill was getting ready to spring another prank on her, which wouldn't be much of a surprise. At present, that didn't matter: all that mattered was staying safe… and getting just enough sleep to keep her going through the long, hard day that was sure to follow.

 _Eight hours,_ she pleaded silently, as she lay down on the bed. _Please, just give me eight hours of sleep. I won't ask for anything else. Give me eight uninterrupted hours of healthy, renewing sleep, and I will be at peace with the world as it is until the next battle royale. Eight hours. Just eight hours._

* * *

This time, Wendy didn't even get past the first hour.

Less than forty-five minutes into what was supposed to be a hard-won slumber, she was awoken by the sound of crumbling masonry, and opened her eyes just in time for the entire building to collapse beneath her. Sent tumbling out of bed, Wendy slid helplessly down the suddenly-diagonal floor and out through the window, followed swiftly by her crossbow, backpack and every single provision left with her. For half a second she was airborne, plummeting towards the waters of the lake and whatever monsters were lurking within; a second later, she landed with a thud in the grip of something large, rubbery and distinctly tentacular.

Instinctively, she lashed out, stabbing the tentacle in a panicked frenzy, but the grip around her waist refused to budge; instead, it began hauling her towards the flooded street – specifically towards a large boat moored just on the edge of the curb.

There, five inhuman figures stood in readiness, their scaly bodies still dripping with brackish water, their webbed hands outstretched towards the starless sky, unblinking eyes fixed on Wendy as she descended towards them.

"Be one with us!" one of the fishmen screeched. "Drink deep of the saltwater sacrament and accept the blessing of transformation! Escape the damnation of the sunlit lands and join us in the deep and boundless ocean, where none shall suffer and no desires will be left unfulfilled!"

Wendy let out a noise that started as a yawn and ended as a snarl of exasperation. "Do we really have to do this right now?" she shouted. "You couldn't ask me again in five hours?"

"The blessings of the eternal sea cannot be denied! All humanity shall know the bliss that we have attained, and all the prisoners of dry land will join us in the Abyssopelagic Paradise of the Mariana Trench! Praise be to the Emperor of the Eternal Ocean, he who brought our blessings back from the precipice of extinction! Praise be to our Lord and Master, Bill Cipher! He shall be forever honoured!"

"Glad to hear it. Can you let me go now? I've got a lot of sleep to catch up on."

"Join us, sister! The Acolytes of the Deep welcome you to the peace that only lightless ocean can bring! Cast off your earthly marks of shame – your hair, your unwebbed hands, your crude lungs, your weak eyes! Partake of our divine communion, cast off your humanity, and join the ranks of the Acolytes of…"

Wendy sighed deeply. "What _ever_ ," she grumbled. "Let's get this over with."

* * *

Several extremely crowded hours later, Wendy staggered out onto the shoreline, dripping wet and sporting at least a dozen extra cuts and bruises. Her knife was dull, her crossbow was out of ammo, her supplies were currently sitting on the bottom of the lake, and now that it was morning, she could easily confirm that she'd gotten no sleep whatsoever.

On the other hand, she'd at least left a dent in Bill's forces – to the tune of ten zombies, thirty-one giant ticks, five Acolytes of the Deep, and one kraken (well, she assumed it was dead – it had been missing at least half of its tentacles and pinned under a bus when she'd last seen it). And more to the point, Bill hadn't been able to kill her, and he sure as hell hadn't broken her.

And with this in mind, Wendy shambled up the beach, sat down heavily in the sand, and promptly lost consciousness.

* * *

The next few weeks were a bit of a blur.

She vaguely recalled making her way out of the crater and getting as far as a highway; there, she was picked up by a couple of ex-Discount Auto Warriors, who gave her a ride in their truck "outta respect to you and Gideon." She'd enjoyed about two precious hours of sleep in the cab, before awakening to discover one of the bandits attempting to pickpocket her. The ensuing fist-fight ended up crashing the truck, dislocating Wendy's shoulder in the process; with the drivers either unconscious or dead, she was forced to pop it back into place by herself, repeatedly slamming herself against the bulk of the crashed truck until the distinctive _crack_ rang out and she could move her arm again.

For a while, she waited for more traffic on the road – she still wasn't certain why: maybe she was starved for company and hoping that there might be other survivors around; maybe she was hoping for another bandit truck to loot for supplies. But after about four hours of waiting in the shade of the ruined truck, lunching on canned peaches and trying not to imagine what else Bill might have in store for her, she eventually realized that she was wasting her time and set off again.

She wasn't sure which direction she took, but she distinctly recalled leaving the road for a dense forest of petrified trees: there, cold grey mist billowed endlessly, blotting out the angry glare of the obsidian sun and plunging the forest into perpetual dusk. She also recalled the trees getting annoyingly aggressive, and having to spend several minutes picking sharpened twigs out of her arms as a result.

Somehow, she eventually made her way into a wide and trackless savannah composed entirely of metal: towering lengths of serrated steel stood as tall as trees, deep pools of molten silver bubbled and simmered in cauldron-like ponds, and hills of riveted iron dotted the alloyed landscape beneath fields of grass composed entirely of old razorblades. Even the fruit on the trees looked suspiciously like hand grenades. And yet, no signs of animal life – not even bees, despite the presence of electrum flowers.

A couple of miles down the pewter-plated pathway, though, Wendy found the remains of previous visitors. Left immobile by the weight of their leaden skeletons, their eyes bloodshot and almost sightless thanks to their platinum irises, their muscles threaded with copper wires, most of them were still bleeding thick trails of viscous mercury. Some had torn themselves open, exposing bellyfuls of iron pistons, bronze gears, and other crude machine parts – none of them functional by the looks of things. The few visitors still alive and conscious spoke to her, just coherent enough to explain that their lungs had started to corrode: they asked her to do something for them, but Wendy couldn't recall what; whenever she tried to remember, she found herself suddenly fighting back tears.

One way or another, she left the steel savannah behind as quickly as possible: even if the metal hadn't been contagious, she didn't much feel like hunting down a tetanus shot in the middle of an apocalypse.

Gravity got weird after that: she vividly recalled walking across a weather-beaten courtyard and watching the ground crack and shatter beneath her feet, huge chunks of asphalt and concrete and god only knew what else floating sharply upwards. With the earth itself shedding one layer of surface after another, Wendy could only hop from one piece of airborne rock to the next, trying to reach some kind of shelter before the inverted gravity sent her flying off into space. Somehow, she made it about fifty feet before gravity gave another wobble and her perch abruptly flipped upside down, sending her crashing into the branches of a tree.

And then… she was in the suburbs, tripping over craters in the ground and stumbling over human corpses, knocking on every single door she passed in the hope that someone might answer. More often than not, there was no reply – either because the house was empty, or because the inhabitants were too scared to answer. Every so often, a door would spring open and a fear-crazed survivor would level a shotgun at her head. Nobody ever wanted to talk, let alone cooperate. A few weren't satisfied with chasing her away: one even tried to cut her throat, and actually got as far as digging his knife into the side of her neck before Wendy was able to kick him away and pummel him into submission.

Sometimes, she'd run into processions of refugees making their way across the wasteland. Some were making their way to the cities, hoping that there'd be other survivors they could buddy up with; some were looking to the suburbs and small towns in the hope that they'd find safety away from the major population centres. Most were just fleeing for their lives, directionless and desperate to the end. Wendy didn't stick around for long, just enough to ask if anyone had seen any sign of Dipper or Mabel or Mr Pines or Soos or any of the others; the answer was always no. Occasionally, however, she entertained some mad notion of staying with the refugees – if only because it'd be better than being alone on the road again. But in the end, Bill always made sure she left: once the refugees worked out that the monsters were following Wendy _,_ _nobody_ wanted her around anymore.

Every so often, the few provisions she'd scavenged from the bandits and abandoned houses ran out, and she went back to hunting food as she had in the earliest days of Weirdmageddon. Sometimes, she was lucky enough to get hold of a halfway-edible bird or a handful of rats, but more often than not, she had to make do with whatever mutant nightmares the wilderness could offer: flying squid, rubbery and tasteless; multi-bodied piranha-hounds, heavily tenderized and often still biting even as she tried to eat them; road worms, each one as thick as a car tyre and about five times long as the average car, only worth the risk of hunting for the rich bounty of succulent internal organs they harboured. Once, she got desperate enough to shoot down an Eyebat and stew it for dinner: easily the worst part of it was the fact that it wouldn't stop staring at her.

Sleep became almost impossible: Bill took such delight in waking her with monster attacks that Wendy eventually gave up on finding shelter entirely, and resolved to soldier on until she could soldier no more. From then on, she subsisted almost entirely on caffeine and energy drinks, and anything else that could keep her from passing out until she was certain that the latest threat was over and done with. She slept wherever she fell, a deep, dreamless sleep that only left her feeling even more exhausted when she finally awoke, and for good measure, she usually ended up hurting all the more for having toppled facefirst onto the asphalt. Every time she fell, she prayed that she stayed down just long enough to get a decent eight hours of sleep, just enough to replenish her strength; invariably, Bill woke her with another monster attack, and Wendy was left to furiously batter the monster into submission before trudging onwards – but always with a little less strength and a little less enthusiasm.

One day, the exhaustion got too much for her: her body was covered in hastily-bandaged cuts and bruises, she hadn't eaten in days, her supplies of coffee and soda had finally run dry, and by that point she'd almost given up on ever seeing her friends and family again anyway. As far as she was concerned, this entire challenge was just a chance for Bill to kick back and watch his newest toy crack under the strain of an impossible task in a world that was literally out to get her at every turn. And once this realization occurred to her, Wendy literally couldn't take another step: she slumped to her knees, collapsed sideways into the dirt, and let the weariness that had been threatening to overwhelm her finally drag her into its depths.

She was dimly aware of heavy footsteps approaching her, of rough hands seizing her by the arms, but she was too tired to care by that stage.

And after that, void was all she knew.

* * *

"Wendy?"

 _Oh no, not again._

"Wendy?"

 _Just go away. Kill me or let me sleep, I don't even care anymore._

"Wendyyyyyyyyyyy? I know you're awake. There's no point in trying to pretend you're asleep anymore. You've tried that trick way too many times for it to work now."

 _Aaaaaand now I'm curious. Who the hell are you and why does your voice sound so familiar? Where the hell am I?_

"Wakey wakey, eggs 'n' bakey. Come on, Wendy: we already know you're awake. Just open your eyes and say hello to your family like a good little girl."

 _WHAT?_

Wendy's eyes shot open, and she immediately realized that she was clearly no longer in the wastelands: she was sitting on a couch in the middle of someone's living room – and in a house that had somehow managed to withstand Weirdmageddon unscathed, no less. No broken windows, no holes in the walls or ceiling, no smashed furniture, no corrosion, no fire damage, no water damage, no damage of any kind in fact. Even the wallpaper was intact, every last-

There was a pause, as Wendy's mind executed the mental equivalent of a double take.

Flannel wallpaper. Red-and-black tartan, as they called it in more pedantic families, but the Corduroys called it flannel whether it was red tartan or green plaid. Trembling, Wendy looked down out the couch she was lying on: the upholstery was flannel too. And on either side of it, those distinctive red lamps. And those pictures on the sideboard were of-

"Welcome home, Wendy," chortled a hideous voice.

Wendy very slowly turned towards the source of the voice.

Sure enough, there he stood in the doorway: Manly Dan Corduroy himself, dressed in the same flannel shirt he always wore when he was at home and relaxed – the one that matched the upholstery of the couch. And yet… something was wrong. The figure standing in the door _looked_ like dad; he had the same massive physique, the same tree trunk-like arms, the same fiery red beard and barroom-brawl teeth… but his expression was warped into a smile that looked utterly alien to dad's permanently-frowning features. And his eyes had changed too. As he drew closer, Wendy half expected to see yellowed sclera and slitted pupils just like the ones Dipper had shown while Bill had been possessing him, but no – whatever was happening to dad was very different.

"What's wrong, Wendy?" Dad boomed cheerily. "Don't you wanna give daddy a hug?"

"I…"

"Come closer. Families should be close, don't you think?"

And as he lumbered menacingly towards her, she got her first clear look at the _things_ wriggling and writhing within dad's eyes: a host of tiny glowing maggots and millipedes continuously scuttled in and out of his eyeballs, passing through his pupils and into the optic nerve without leaving a scratch – and judging by the glowing trails they left in their wake, they were tunnelling steadily deeper into his skull.

He was holding an axe in his hand, Wendy realized.

 _No, no, no, no, this can't be happening…_

"Dad," she began. "Wait just a-"

Suddenly, the axe was in motion. Wendy had just enough time to dive out of the way before the axe slammed home, cleaving the couch in half. A split second later, she saw dad's shoulder give an almighty heave out of the corner of her eye and she instinctively ducked just in time to avoid a fist the size of a Thanksgiving turkey hurtling towards her; in the spot where she'd been standing a moment ago, one of the lamps exploded into flying shrapnel.

"Come on, Wendy," dad sneered. "You can do better than that. _I_ taught you better than that."

"What do you want? Why are you doing this?!"

"Weren't you listening to what Bill told you? It's kill or be killed! Either you prove that you're the greatest survivor this family's ever produced, or you'll just have to let me pour these Thought-Maggots into your eye sockets. You won't have to think or feel ever again. You'll be just like us: a family of perfect survivors in the service of the Maggot Hive and Bill Cipher. Isn't that right, boys?"

Mocking laughter echoed from around the house, and suddenly the corridor from which dad emerged was blocked by three all-too familiar figures: Wendy's brothers, all of them grinning rabidly, their eyes aglow with Thought-Maggots. And all three of them were armed – even the youngest was brandishing Wendy's hatchet.

 _Oh god, wake me up. Someone wake me up from this nightmare._

"Dad," Wendy pleaded, "If you're still in there-"

"Oh I am, Wendy. I'm always in here. That's the beauty of the Maggots: they always leave just a little bit of the real you behind once they're finished converting you."

"-I don't want to fight you!"

"Really? That's okay then: all you gotta do is lie back and let the worms feast, and you'll never have to worry about anything ever again. Of course, if you wanna get outta here alive and in one piece, then you'll have to fight us."

" _I don't want to hurt you!"_

The four of them laughed, a sickening parody of her family's usual booming guffaws.

"Oh, hurtin's just half of it, Wendy. You wanna get out of this house alive, you'll have to kill all four of us. Split our skulls open, scatter the worms and burn the bodies. Bill says you've got the guts to kill monsters, but have you got the stomach to kill a human being? You got the iron in the blood to kill family?"

"Dad, _please,_ don't make me do this…"

"Kill or be killed, girl. Law of the jungle – and more importantly, Bill's law, too. Kill us, or let the worms eat from the inside out. So tell me… _what's it gonna be?"_

And so, with Bill's obnoxious laughter echoing across the house from somewhere overhead, Wendy finally made the only reasonable decision left to her.

She ran.

She flung herself over the coffee table, ducked the next swing of the axe and sprinted out the door as fast as her feet could carry her – out of the house and back into the endless nightmare that was modern-day Gravity Falls.

But Bill was still laughing.

 _They'll never stop hunting you, Red,_ he cackled. _They'll be following your trail from now on, and they won't stop until you're dead or you've got human blood on your hands… and I won't stop until I see your sanity split down the middle like a china plate in a shooting gallery. You just wait. It's gonna hurt_ so good…

* * *

A/N: Up next - Pacifica's game!


	6. Of Porcelain Dolls and Barbed Thrones

A/N: Behold! The latest chapter!

Fantasy Fan 223: This is definitely going to be a chapter that tests Pacifica's sanity; I'm glad you liked the previous installation, and I hope this latest one lives up to the standard. Thanks so much!

Kraven the Hunter: Well, without saying too much, there's still time for that evil idea - after all, I'm going to check in on the characters soon! As for whether the parasite-infested Corduroys were Wendy's real family... well, nightmare fuel for you: maybe he's already killed the originals to make way for an army of clones made from genetic material harvested from their corpses. Or maybe they're still alive, connected to their parasite-infested clones by psychic link, unable to stop their other selves from attacking.

Northgalus2002: Glad you like the story so far! Spoiler - there's going to be a tiny ray of sunshine in this chapter; it's subtle, but it's there at long last, as promised.

ImpossibleJedi4: Well, it's going to be fun, alright - very grim and disturbing fun, but fun nonetheless. I'm glad you're enjoying it, and I hope I can keep up the quality!

Sola Haze: Yep - he's a cheater 'til the end. Wendy might still take them up on the offer (or force the Acolytes to accept her if they're still sore over the end of their last meeting); after all, I'm going to be returning to the past players in later chapters. As for how I came up with the landscape of Weirdmageddon, I basically take the idea that Bill has built the world solely to mess with his captives and parlay it into a series of post-apocalyptic scenarios designed to push apocalypse expert Wendy to her limit: zombies, giant bugs, mutants/Waterworld. Plus, the environments don't have to abide by natural laws, so they can be smooshed together with very little in the way of cohesion, further enforcing the notion that geography is whatever Bill says it is. I'm glad you like the story, and I'm flattered that you think I should be writing real books - currently working on that, believe it or not: as always, the problem is finding a publisher.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is notteth myne.

 **13/6/17** \- made corrections to a few typoes and incorrect word choices. Sorry.

* * *

To Pacifica's immense surprise, she did not awake to the sound of Bill Cipher's obnoxious laughter, as she'd been expecting. Nor had she been awoken by the sounds of other survivors whimpering in fear and pain, or the otherworldly shrieks of the things that prowled the forest just outside the safety of the Mystery Shack. She wasn't a tapestry decorating a throne room anymore, and yet, she wasn't cowering behind the Shack's walls with only a rat-eaten sleeping bag between her and the cold hardwood floor, either… and she definitely wasn't dressed in the potato sack she'd been wearing for the last three days.

She was lying in her own plush four-poster bed, cocooned in pre-cooled bedsheets and almost lost amidst carefully-plumped pillows, watching as dawn slowly trickled in through the mullioned windows. All around her lay her belongings, things she'd thought lost to her since Weirdmageddon had dawned: her golf clubs, her trophies, her collection of oil paintings, her wall-length mirror, her library of fashion magazines, her jewellery, her cosmetics, the two massive wardrobes of clothes, the porcelain dolls she'd stopped collecting on the day she'd turned nine but never had the heart to throw away... Somehow, against all odds, Pacifica had ended up back in her bedroom at Northwest Manor.

Somehow, she was home.

Had Dipper and Mabel actually managed to defeat Bill, even without the circle? Was Weirdmageddon over? Or had it all been a dream? Had everything she'd experienced in Weirdmageddon been nothing more than a nightmare?

Trembling, she sat up in bed – and immediately realized that something was wrong: normally, Pacifica's feet would have been just a few inches from the end of the bed, but now they barely got halfway across the mattress. Somehow, the bed had _grown_ to double its usual size, and taken everything from the bedsheets to the pillows with it. Right now, she was sitting on a pillow roughly the size of a tractor tyre, pinned down under silk sheets that felt more like lead-lined tarpaulin than anything else. And now that she was upright and aware, the rest of the room seemed larger, too: at present, her bed was a colossal plateau above a stretch of carpet so dense and wild that Pacifica half expected to see lions chasing herds of wildebeest across it; all around her, shelves jutted skywards like sheer cliff faces, wardrobes and dressing tables forming an unearthly mountain range of polished redwood, the chandelier a mass of glittering crystal stalagmites. Somehow, the world around her hand grown – or perhaps _she'd_ shrunk.

On instinct, Pacifica looked down at herself: at the moment, it was impossible to tell if she was smaller or the room was bigger, but whatever had happened, she definitely hadn't shrunk out of her clothes (thank goodness). However, she could tell at once that there was something different about her hands: they seemed _smoother,_ somehow, as if all the lines and whorls from heels to fingertips had been erased. Looking closer, she found that her skin had actually hardened into a gleaming shell almost like…

… _Porcelain._

Mind almost blank with fear, she found herself crawling to the edge of the bed and clambering down the side of the mattress, scaling the bedsheets all the way to the floor. She knew there was a mirror on the opposite side of the room, one big enough to see herself in without having to clamber over the furniture to reach it, but getting all the way to the other side of her bedroom was a trial in and of itself – partly because the carpet was so thick but mostly because it required her to navigate the tangle of furniture she could no longer push out of the way.

Eventually, she made it to the mirror, and peered anxiously at her reflection in the hopes of seeing precisely what was wrong with her.

A doll stared back.

All Pacifica's features were there: pale blue eyes, aristocratic cheekbones, flawless skin, golden-blonde hair down to her hips… but now they belonged to a doll. Her eyes were glass, her hair clearly synthetic fibres, and while her skin _appeared_ to move with the malleability of living flesh, it remained as smooth and impermeable as bisque porcelain.

She was a doll.

And then, just as she was starting to think the situation couldn't get any more distressing, the bedroom door shot open without so much as a knock, and a squadron of maids burst in. Before Pacifica could ask any of them all the obvious questions, she found herself hoisted off the ground and forcibly sat down in front of the vanity, where the maids proceeded to wash her face, comb her hair, strip away the nightgown, rush her into a brand-new formal dress, apply makeup, and sprinkle her with perfume for good measure. Even though Pacifica told them she could easily dress herself, none of the maids listened to a single word she'd said, and try as she might, she couldn't force their hands away: her new body just didn't have the strength or the reach to do so.

As soon as the ablutions were finished, Pacifica was shepherded across the room and out the door – and here, the _real_ horror began: as soon as she crossed the threshold, all control over her body abruptly ceased, leaving her mind thumping helplessly on the walls of her skull as her body stopped resisting and acquiesced to the maids' orders. Once again, she was helpless – except this time she didn't even have the luxury of protesting as loudly and obscenely as possible: she was now a prisoner of her own body and no matter how loudly she screamed, nobody could hear her.

After several agonizing minutes of silent terror, the maids led Pacifica into the mansion's entrance hall, which was currently being prepared for a celebration by the looks of things: trestle tables of party food were being hauled into place, the cider fountain was already being filled, and ice-sculptures of Pacifica herself had been positioned in special refrigerated enclosures. Somewhere at the back of her conscious mind, an alarm bell sounded and was immediately dismissed: as familiar as this particular scene looked, it couldn't be happening again; it had to be déjà vu or coincidence or something that made some kind of rational sense.

Yes, she'd been turned into a doll and had lost all free will, but she couldn't have time travelled as well, right?

As expected, Mother and Father were waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, perfectly human and even taller than usual thanks to Pacifica's current condition.

Much less expected was the sight of Father – proud and dignified patriarch of the Northwest clan – sitting in a _wheelchair,_ of all things. Preston Northwest wasn't one for showing weakness of any kind, even in the privacy of his own home; even on the rare occasion he came down with a head cold, he refused to let anyone but his personal physician see him until the bug had run its course. For _anyone_ to see him like this, with his once-regal bearing left crooked by the thrust-forward seating, with his arms and legs swaddled in blankets like the late Mayor Befuftlefumpter, was almost inconceivable. He'd have rather put his legs in braces and walked with a cane rather than let the servants of the house look down on him.

What had caused this? Had Weirdmageddon happened after all? Maybe that would explain why Pacifica was a doll… but that still didn't explain what Bill Cipher was trying to do by having her back at home on top of everything else. Granted, she'd seen enough of Weirdmageddon to abandon all hope of anything making any kind of sense.

Whatever the case, she could tell that Father hadn't completely lost the use of his legs, for his knees were ever-so-slightly writhing beneath the blanket, his feet swivelling uncomfortably against the footplates as he struggled to make himself comfortable in the wheelchair – though Pacifica hesitated to use such a word.

If anything, the colossal wheeled conveyance squatting at the bottom of the stairs looked more like a throne: a gleaming, diamond-encrusted monstrosity of gold filigree, satin cushions and bleeding-edge electronics supported by a frame of steel and onyx, this was the kind of wheelchair fit only for autocrats. And yet, there was so much of it she couldn't see with all those blankets covering the armrests…

"Pacifica," Father purred. "Just in time. I see the servants took their time getting you into the dress your mother ordered… but I can see it was well worth the trouble."

Mother tittered vapidly. "It's just like I told you, Pacifica," she said. "Seafoam Green's the only colour fit for the Northwests this year. The guests will just _love_ it _."_

 _Oh no._

And to Pacifica's horror, she felt her own mouth open of its own accord, and heard her own voice – or someone's best mimicry of it – say "As you say, mother. The guests will love it. I'm glad I could make a good impression for the family."

"Excellent," said Father, briskly. "Make sure you keep it up once the guests start arriving: these people have come to expect the very best, and I expect everyone in this house – family or staff – to be ready to impress our visitors… and ensure that the rabble gathering outside our walls do _not_ breach this compound. The festivities tomorrow night are crucial to maintaining our social standing in the international community, and I will not see this family disgraced before the eyes of the wealthiest men and women on the planet. Is that understood?"

But to Pacifica's surprise, the death glare didn't fall on her: instead, Mother was the one who bore the brunt of Preston Northwest's disapproving scowl, another thing Pacifica couldn't recall seeing in her lifetime. After all, when was the last time her mother had done _anything_ contrary to the good of the family, let alone Father's desires? But here she was, nodding silently, as shamefaced as Pacifica herself was whenever the bell had been brought out.

"Excellent!" said her father, his usual self-assured smile back on his face. Once again, he shifted in his wheelchair, and this time a spasm of pain flitted across his face; a moment later, the smile had returned, but somehow more desperate. He waved the butler over, immediately snatching a large glass of wine from the plate he was carrying. "So!" he said loudly. "Here's to our annual party – and to the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of this house's completion!"

 _Oh no,_ Pacifica thought, as Father drained the glass in a single gulp. _It's happening again. It's the night of the party, only this time I'm doing everything they wanted to me to – starting with the dress… and that means that any minute now-_

Suddenly, the mansion was filled with the sound of crockery shattering and cutlery hurling itself at anyone unlucky enough to be within range, audible even this far from the banqueting hall. From the drawing room just down the corridor, there echoed the faint but unmistakable roar of the Lumberjack's ghost bellowing in rage – still too weak to take form but just strong enough to play poltergeist.

The curse had begun again.

* * *

The next day, Father sent her to the Mystery Shack to request help for Dipper – just as he had the last time. Somehow not noticing the fact that Pacifica had shrunk, Dipper kept to the script by initially turning her down, only to reluctantly change his mind after some cajoling from Mabel and her friends. And once again, three tickets to the Northwest party changed hands.

Outwardly, Pacifica was just as standoffish and irritable as she had been the first time, following every single word of the script to the letter; inwardly, she was screaming. For every second of that brief meeting, she was trying in vain to regain control of her voice just so she could tell Dipper to _stay away from Northwest Manor_ , because she knew that Father wouldn't need a bell to manipulate her anymore and this time she wouldn't be able to open the gates; this time, the Lumberjack's ghost would burn the mansion to the ground and every single guest outside the panic room would be incinerated. If Dipper accepted her offer this time, he would die – along with Mabel, Grenda, and Candy and everyone outside the manor walls unlucky enough to be caught in the inevitable stampede to escape the blaze.

When she wasn't pleading for Dipper to turn her down, she was pleading for him to help her: after all, if there was anyone who could undo whatever had been done to her, it was Dipper – after all, he still had one of the Journals around this time, and he knew what it was like to lose all control of his body to someone else. Maybe, just maybe, if she could regain enough control to tell him what had happened, they might just be able to fix her and _maybe_ derail the whole night.

And when that didn't work, she tried the same thing with Mabel when the limousine arrived to pick them up. After all, she'd saved her life before; maybe she'd be able to do it again. For almost twenty minutes, she could only sit in the back seat of the car, hoping against hope that something about Mabel – like that godawful homemade dress with the glue-gun stuck to the hem, for instance – would be annoying enough to get Pacifica to regain control. Instead, she could only sit in the back of her skull and watch helplessly as the limousine silently ferried them back to Northwest Manor.

For the first few hours of the evening, almost everything proceeded as it had the first time: the arrival, the "Welcome to Northwest Manor, dorks," Mabel's exuberant fit, Dipper being shepherded off for an emergency tuxedo fitting that Pacifica couldn't help admiring, the search for the offending the ghost, the manifestation of the Lumberjack ghost, and the chase through the corridors that had followed.

Over the course of the chase, though, things started going off script: once again, Pacifica refused to allow Dipper to cross Mother and Father's favourite carpet, but this time she heard the childish panic in her voice replaced by something cold and remorseless. This time, she heard herself say _"You're here to save the dignity of the Northwest family, Pines, not to ruin it! Either you find another way or I leave you here to die!"_

And to Pacifica's horror, she found herself actually reaching out to snatch the Journal from Dipper's hands; in the ensuing tussle, the two of them tripped backwards into the Northwest Family's secret archive of dirty little secrets – where, just as before, the silver mirror was waiting for them. Soon after, the Lumberjack was captured almost according to script.

This time, though, Pacifica didn't hug Dipper; she didn't even condescend to shake his hand before he left the grounds – and somehow, that seemed worse than all the horrors and indignities she'd endured as a prisoner in her own body. A hug might have dulled that terrible feeling of isolation that had descended on her as the day had dragged on; contact with someone, _anyone_ would have given her some hope that she could be saved… and in spite of how embarrassed she'd felt in the aftermath of that impulsive embrace, re-living how she'd felt the first time she'd hugged Dipper would have been more than welcome.

As strange as it was to acknowledge the fact, she liked him. True, she'd never admit it to his face, but the colossal dork was actually kind of cute in a somewhat geeky kind of way… but more than that, he'd been _right_ about the Northwests, in everything he'd said about her (good and bad), and as harsh as he'd been with her initially, he'd been kind to her – far kinder than she deserved.

It seemed so odd to acknowledge him as a friend, even in the solitude of her own mind: she'd never really had friends before she'd met Dipper and Mabel. She'd had _an entourage of capable associates_ assigned by her parents after an extensive screening process, and she'd been specifically ordered not to remember their names in the event that they had to be replaced. Calling the two _attendants_ by their names was a punishable offence, one that always left the sound of the bell ringing in Pacifica's ears until she'd finally learned her lesson.

"They're not worth the effort, Pacifica," Father had told her in the aftermath of one particularly embarrassing incident. "Friends, much like the rest of the rabble, are interchangeable in every way: stupid, lazy and always begging for handouts. The sooner you realize how easily they can be bought and sold, the happier you'll be for it. Now, a _business partner_ is definitely worth remembering: friends will only accumulate debts they can't possibly repay; a good partner will enrich you and the family for decades – centuries, even."

With disconnection from her attendants being mandatory, high-fives, handshakes and hugs were officially forbidden except on special occasions. Now, after god only knew how many years of restricted interactions, human contact left her feeling unsettled and unusual: the concept of accepting food from Mabel in the form of "sharing" had left her completely bamboozled for most of the evening. But as embarrassed as Dipper's hug had left her, that brief moment of human contact had been the first happy moment she'd enjoyed all evening, and its absence only made the sense of imprisonment all the more horrific. Now she didn't just feel like a spectator; she didn't even feel like a prisoner: she felt _buried alive._

Then, when Dipper finally returned in a fury, Pacifica could only listen in horror as her own voice sneered, "I honestly don't know why you're angry about this, Pines. It's not as if you _knew_ any of those dead lumberjacks, is it? Why should you care about a few rats drowned in the rain? If anything, I think you should be thanking us for leaving them to the mudslides: tonight, you got to enjoy luxury that most of your class will never know, and you overlooked everything you knew about us just so you could give Mabel and her idiot friends a chance at enjoying it as well... and you're not going to give it up, because you don't want to see that that doe-eyed social cripple you call a sister crying. See, you're just like every other member of the rabble I've ever met: gullible, stupid, easily bought, and best of all, _replaceable._ So, if you want my advice, I'd enjoy tonight while you still can: enjoy the privilege of holding my attention for as long as you have… because tomorrow, you'll be forgotten – by me, by my parents, by the _real_ party guests, and by everyone on the planet who really matters."

 _No, no, no,_ Pacifica whispered. _I'm not saying this, Dipper, you have to believe me – I'm not the one saying this. Please, you have to know I wouldn't say this to you. You have to hear me when I say this. Please,_ please, help me _. I can't bear another minute of this – drag me away, plug my ears, puncture my eardrums, anything, just please stop this._

"I was right about you all along," said Dipper, quietly. "You're just another link in the world's worst chain… and if that's the only thing you can be remembered for, then I'm happy being forgotten."

And without another word, he stormed off, leaving Pacifica alone with her grief.

Minutes later, the Lumberjack escaped containment and descended upon Northwest Manor in a fury: in the ensuing reality breakdown, guests were transmuted into wooden statues, hunting trophies came to life and assaulted the survivors, and the trees of the long-dead forest erupted through the floorboards to reclaim the mansion from within. Just as before, Dipper arrived back at the Manor in a desperate attempt to stop the chaos. This time, of course, he didn't bother trying to appeal to Pacifica's better nature, not now that he had conclusive proof that it didn't exist. Instead, he made a beeline for the ghost, intending to imprison him in yet another mirror – but just as before, the Lumberjack was ready for him: with the first blast of spectral energy, he blasted the mirror out of Dipper's hands, and with the second, he reduced him to another wooden statue.

Had there been any justice in the world, this would have been Pacifica's cue to finally regain control of her own body and open the gates. But no: she remained imprisoned in her own skull, her body standing calmly in the corner as the nightmarish transformation of the manor reached its grisly conclusion. When the ghost issued his final ultimatum, she remained there, outwardly unmoved by the column of fire billowing up from the fireplace and licking greedily at the manor's roof – even as it quickly spread to the rest of the mansion.

She wanted to look away; if she couldn't open the gates, then she should at least be able to avert her gaze or shut her eyes or anything that would spare her the sight of the flames consuming the transmuted guests. But she couldn't: her eyes remained open and fixed on the conflagration slowly rippling across the entrance hall towards the waiting crowd; even when the butler took her by the hand and began leading her across the blazing ruins towards the panic room where her parents awaited her, Pacifica could still see every moment of the carnage that followed, though the smoke did its best to obscure her view.

When she finally reached the open trapdoor, she was afforded a few moments of mercy when her body looked away from the chaos, if only to descend the ladder into the waiting panic room. But in the few seconds before the trapdoor slammed shut behind her, she turned – and saw the flames enveloping Dipper's body. A moment later, a beam dropped from the ceiling like the blade of a guillotine, shattering his charred remains into a thousand pieces; then, the door slammed shut, and darkness was all she knew.

* * *

For the first half-hour, all Pacifica could do was scream.

For thirty long minutes, she screamed and cried and wept and pounded on the inside of her skull with her non-existent fists, trying in vain to take back her body – without success. For every minute of that first terrible hour, her body sat in a corner, smiling idiotically at the sterile white enclosure that was to be their home until the danger had passed, and the fact that nobody could hear the _real_ Pacifica's voice only made her outpouring of grief and frustration all the more painful.

In the end, though, she simply ran out of energy: her internalized screaming couldn't wear her out in the usual sense, given that it didn't consume oxygen, but it definitely wore her out on an emotional level. After the half-hour was up and her last drop of emotion spend, there honestly much left to do but stare out at the world in a daze.

Dipper was dead.

Mabel was dead.

The only two friends she'd ever had in her entire life were dead, and all hope of reclaiming her body had died with them. And now, by all appearances, she was going to spend the rest of her day as a prisoner of both her family and her own body, forced to watch as she sleepwalked through life exactly as Father intended. What was the point in getting upset when she knew nobody would ever see or hear it?

What was the point in _anything?_

So, she remained silent in spirit as well as body for a change, ticking off the hours as they dragged by, wearily observing the survivors she now shared the panic room with: the butler, stoic and almost as silent as Pacifica; Mother, shivering and clearly terrified out of her life; and Father, smiling triumphantly… and yet unable to hide the spasms of pain flitting across his face.

The four of them stayed in the panic room for over a week, living off tasteless sandwiches and spring water… and when the food finally ran out, Father remained true to his word – though he had Mother carry out the deed when the time finally came. For every step of the dreadful process, Mother was a trembling, sobbing wreck, barely able to see what she was doing through her tears; by contrast, the butler never stirred, even when the straight-razor tore through his throat.

By that stage, Pacifica was so benumbed by her experiences that she barely noticed the sudden change in the menu. In fact, had the butler's cannibalized remains not been clearly sitting in the corner, she might never have realized that she wasn't eating pork after all.

On the ninth day, the rescue teams finally dug their way through the ruins of the manor and released the three of them from the panic room. And then…

Time became increasingly fluid: months seemed to pass in minutes, the procession of front-page articles, press conferences, funerals, insurance payments, construction crews and public forgetfulness whizzing past in a kaleidoscopic blur of snapshots. The Northwests were absolved of blame for the deaths of so many wealthy socialites; the fire was dismissed as arson committed by a jealous member of the public; the victims of that night were given suitably lavish funerals – though few recognizable bodies were left to bury. Eventually, the Tragedy of the Northwest Manor Party drifted off the front pages and into the hazy realm of public memory, where it was promptly forgotten. Eventually, the construction crews descended upon the hill, sweeping away the wreckage and erecting palatial towers in their place, laying the foundations for a brand new Northwest Manor.

And what felt like only an hour later, Pacifica found herself being ushered back into a perfect replica of her old room and left there while her parents "settled in."

Then, _and only then_ did she finally regain control of her body.

 _Okay,_ she thought absently. _In here, I'm in control. Out there, I'm controlled by Bill Cipher or whoever's running this little nightmare. Good to know._

She took a deep breath, opened her mouth and screamed: for forty straight seconds, she vented every moment of fear, sorrow, anger and pain that had built up in the back of her mind over the course of the last week, and didn't stop screaming until she had exhausted every last vestige of breath in her lungs. And after that…

…well, for lack of a better term, she went a little bit crazy.

Most of it she didn't even remember. However, one moment that stuck in her mind featured her standing in front of the mirror and cracking the skin on her arms with the base of her heaviest trophy, laboriously peeling great chunks of porcelain off her shattered limbs in the hope that there'd be _real_ flesh underneath, that if she just smashed enough of her doll self away she'd be able to break free of it like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis and be human again.

But no matter how much of her porcelain flesh she smashed and tore away, there always another layer of it waiting underneath, and after tearing through no less than three replacement layers of skin and leaving it all piled at her feet like so many broken eggshells, she had to admit that continuing would be futile.

And then, just as she was starting to wonder what was to become of her next, there was a knock at the door, and the voice of the replacement butler murmured, "Your father would like to speak with you…"

* * *

The first thing she noticed upon being ushered into the study was that she could move her arms and legs again once she crossed the threshold; either this was another room in the house where she had free will, or Father wanted to speak candidly with her – for once.

The second thing she noticed was that Father's desk had been replaced by a massive slab of polished marble, large enough to take up the entire rear wall of the study; even with the room as massive as it was, this colossal chunk of rock still dominated the chamber in a way that the imposing redwood desk never had. In fact, looking closer at it, Pacifica realized that wasn't merely a slab or even a pedestal, but a _step-pyramid_ – and it was right at the uppermost pinnacle of this marble ziggurat that Father was being positioned. Now, with the wheels removed and the chair having been crane-lifted on top of the pyramid, there was no doubt: his wheelchair really was a throne.

"I hope you appreciate this, Pacifica," he grumbled, as Mother locked the last of the chair's supports in place. "I went to a great deal of trouble to make sure your _indiscretion_ never happened, and I expect you to take full advantage of the opportunity this represents. Now that you're in control of your own body again, you're to be on your best behaviour from now on, and you will be attentive to my lessons – _all of them._ Is that understood?"

Pacifica blinked in horror. "You mean… this is because of you?" she exploded. "You turned me into – no, you _had_ someone turn me into a doll? You made me watch Dipper die, all because you wanted the party to end the way _you_ wanted it to?!"

" _On your best behaviour,_ Pacifica. I tolerated your big moment of rebellion – barely – and I will not tolerate any more of it. And no: if the party had ended exactly the way I wanted it to, that ghost would have been exorcized and our guests would have left the building alive, but…" Father sighed wearily. "Beggars – can't – be – choosers," he concluded, slowly forcing every word through gritted teeth like barbed wire dental floss. "And no, I didn't arrange for _anyone_ to turn you into a doll: that was Bill's idea of a joke."

"You made a deal with Bill?" Pacifica demanded. " _You're working with Bill Cipher?!"_

By way of an explanation, Father pressed a button on the right armrest of his throne. Immediately, footlights set in the base of the wall behind him illuminated a huge tapestry depicting dozens of tiny figures grovelling before a rather familiar-looking triangular deity.

"This family has been in business with Bill Cipher for the better part of a hundred and fifty years, Pacifica," Father snapped. "Why do you think the government selected Nathaniel Northwest for the role of replacement town founder? True, our means of summoning him was lost back in the 1930s, but our loyalty to him has never truly faltered. Why do you think I pledged my allegiance to Bill the moment Weirdmageddon began? Why do you think I invested my money in Weirdness bonds even after that business with my face? Ever since our great ancestor's bargain with Bill catapulted him into a position of esteem, we have owed everything to this mighty entity, and in order to ensure the continued good fortune of our family, we are obliged to pay the price he occasionally asks of us!"

"Like what? Going crazy and choking to death on tree bark?"

"Exactly! Nathaniel Northwest's unfortunate demise was a tragic but perfectly acceptable variation of the cost sometimes demanded of our bloodline-"

"And what was the cost demanded of _you,_ exactly? Getting bound to a wheelchair even though you clearly don't need it? Making your family commit cannibalism?"

From a corner of the study/throne room came the sound of Priscilla Northwest trying valiantly not to throw up.

Meanwhile, Father's already thunderous expression took a turn for the downright apocalyptic. "You make it sound as though it wasn't worth it," he snarled. "Do you comprehend just how far we fell thanks to your little spectacle at the party, the depths we sank to _because of you?!_ One of our best-kept secrets ended up on display before the public eye, more than half of our most eligible business partners for the next year severed ties with us, and some of the guests actually threatened to sue! Two days before Weirdmageddon began, I was being taken to court on charges of criminal negligence – because of you!"

"Right," said Pacifica. "Because letting some of the richest and most powerful people in the world burn alive would have been a _totally_ litigation-free solution."

This time, Father didn't even bother warning her: the bell was in his hand and ringing before she could even react to its presence; it must have been hidden in one of the armrests of his throne, for his hands hadn't left their position there at all in the last few minutes. Pacifica could only grit her teeth and try to resist all the painful impulses now flooding her brain as she waited for the ringing to subside; this time, though, the sound of the bell didn't end with her staring shamefaced at the floor – a small victory but well worth it.

"And what about your activities in Weirdmageddon?" Father plunged on. "Thanks to those Weirdness bonds, I could have been able to make a new deal with Bill and arrange a return to our former position, but you and those idiot friends of your spoiled everything! The moment you invaded the Fearamid, the deal was off the table!"

" _What_ deal? You were petrified at the time!"

The bell rang again. "He'd already restored my face! He said I'd be freed from petrification if my investments went as planned! But you-"

"You specifically told me to take part in the Circle! You told me to take Old Man McGucket's hand!"

"SHUT UP WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU!" Father roared, ringing the bell so violently that it looked as if it might fall from his grasp. "I told you to join the Circle because you'd already ruined my deal and left me with no other way out. Then, of course, you and your friends failed! We would have been paupers on the street if you'd had your way! So it fell to me to save this family: our benefactor agreed to undo your collaboration with the gatecrashers and return the Northwests to their former glory in a pocket reality where Weirdmageddon never happened. In return, I agreed to serve him without question, and took my place on the only true emblem of this family's leadership."

And with that, he reached over to the blankets shrouding his limbs and tossed them aside, revealing the throne in all its hideous glory: above the gleaming shell of gold filigree and polished onyx, beyond the gem-studded flanks and cushioned headrest, Preston Northwest's throne was covered in dozens upon dozens of needle-sharp hooks, each one about two inches long and tipped with a vicious-looking barb. Even as far as she was from the throne, Pacifica could clearly see five on each armrest, nine just above the footplates, and as many as twenty on the backrest… and most of them were now embedded in Father's body, tearing through his clothes and digging deep into his flesh, befouling his $800,000 suit with blood. Some had been driven so violently into his arms that they'd actually punched clean through to the other side, leaving the gore-soaked barb exposed to the air. In any case, it was clear why he hadn't left the wheelchair even though he still had the use of his legs: with that many hooks in him, it would have been impossible to move without doing himself serious injury.

"This," Father hissed, through gritted teeth, "is the Northwest Throne. A symbol of our greatness and the price we must pay for it: we all enjoy the power, wealth, influence and respect our status affords us, and we all must live with burden of serving the family's interests above those of any individual – or any outsider; the head of the family must always serve, must always ensure the continued survival of the Northwest clan and its continued rise to power, for if he abandons the throne, he is lost. Oh, the idea of this throne's existed for decades, but it didn't exist physically until Bill Cipher made it so… and I think it might just be the best thing that's ever happened to this family. Because you see, it's not only allowed us to become kings of our own little world, but it's also ensured that the next generations of this family will never make the mistakes you made – not after seeing the price that dereliction of duty exacts."

 _He's crazy,_ Pacifica thought. _He's lost his mind. He couldn't possibly say all this if he actually had a sane thought in his head… I hope._

"Now," he concluded, "It's time you accepted the inevitable: Bill Cipher is in command of all reality and all humanity, and as our family's patron, he is owed your immediate grovelling obedience. So, when he arrives, you will fall on your knees and worship him as is his due. I don't want to hear another word out of your mouth about Dipper or Mabel or any of those plebeian ingrates you call friends: from now on, you will serve our family and you will obey our benefactor without question. Is that understood?"

Pacifica didn't answer: something white-hot and angry was silently burning at the back of her mind.

"I said, _is that understood?"_

"Go to hell, dad."

Father's eyes widened in rage. "Is that any way to speak to your father?" he hissed. "Is that any way to speak to the patriarch of the richest and most powerful family on the planet-"

"Oh _grow up!_ You don't have power, dad; you don't even have wealth. You only have what Bill wants you to have: you said yourself you didn't want me turned into a doll; you said you didn't want the party guests massacred, but it happened all the same – because Bill thought it'd be funny. Bill's the one with all the power here, dad: you're just another one of his toys!"

"How dare you-"

"No, how dare _you!"_ Pacifica screamed back. "You talk about how much I cost this family, about how badly I damaged our reputation, about how we would have all been poor and disgraced if I'd "had my way." I risked my _life_ trying to save you! I saw you petrified with the rest of Gravity Falls and I said – _out loud_ – that you didn't deserve that! It's because of Dipper and Mabel that we were there to save you in the first place, and you repaid them by rewinding time and leaving them to die! The people who were in that circle trying to stop Bill were a thousand times better than you, and if you had any decency to speak of, you'd have statues built in their honour. But you won't, and you know why? Because you're too happy being a slave to ever imagine doing anything worthwhile – _like fixing this godforsaken joke of a family!"_

"I won't stand for this, Pacifica-"

"Weren't you listening? I don't care what you stand for! As far as I'm concerned, the only thing you ever stood for is yourself, and you screwed that up in the end by letting Bill Cipher turn you into a windup toy!"

"ENOUGH!" Father roared, and reached for the bell again.

But this time, his grip failed him: maybe his fingers were slick with blood, maybe the hooks digging into his arms had done too much damage to his muscles. One way or another, the bell slipped from his hands and fell to the floor, landing on the uppermost step of the ziggurat with a nerve-shredding _diiiiing_ and bouncing down the steps with a long, drawn-out procession of discordant ringing – before finally rolling to a halt at Pacifica's doll-sized feet.

There was a stunned pause.

Then, Father whispered "Give that to me, Pacifica."

"No."

"I said-"

"I heard what you said, Father. I'm just not interested in listening anymore: you can't get me to do _anything_ , now."

"Pacifica, I am your father, and as head of this family, you will obey me! Now give me that bell!"

"If you want it so badly, then get off the throne and come get it."

Father's eyes flitted wildly between the bell and Pacifica, before finally settling on the terrified figure of her mother.

"Priscilla, bring me the bell, now!" he ordered.

But as expected, Mother froze. Judging by the emotional breakdown in the panic room and the way Father had so obviously raged at her behind closed doors, she'd already had reservations with the family's new arrangements. So, instead of responding in any meaningful fashion, she went stiff as a board and tried to merge with the wall behind her.

"Goddammit, will someone _pick up the bell?!"_ Father howled – a distinct note of desperation in his voice.

From somewhere behind him, there was a shriek of maniacal laughter; a moment later, Bill Cipher materialized in mid-air just above Father's head, sending tiny shockwaves of energy rippling out across the study.

"Oooh, it looks as though you're losing your touch, Famine!" Bill cackled. "Maybe the throne wasn't meant for you after all!"

 _Famine?_ Pacifica thought bemusedly. _Oh right, the Horseman of the Apocalypse request. Guess Bill decided to take it as a joke._

If Father's expression had seemed desperate before, now it looked downright panicked. "No!" he said hurriedly. "I've more than earned my place on this throne! I'm just having some difficulties settling in! Give me some time, and I'll get these two under control again, I promise!"

"So you admit you've lost control? That's not like you, Famine. What happened to the good ol' Northwest charm and confidence? Your old man had it right up to the day he died, and so did every Northwest worth a mention in the family tree. You kept it up, even when the sky split open and puked a horde of demons on Gravity Falls… but now that you've got everything you could possibly want, it's all falling apart! What's wrong, Famine? Come on, buddy, share the pain with your old pal Bill."

"Nothing's wrong! I swear to you, this family will be back under my command within the hour, and we'll be able to deliver you whatever you could possibly want!"

"Oooh, within the hour? Optimistic! I like it. Pity you obviously don't have what it takes to run the family anymore, not under the new conditions. Inevitable really: you don't really learn what people are really capable of until you squeeze 'em; some deliver the most incredible things, others just dry up and blow away like dead leaves. You're no Fordsie, pal. Looks like you're on the way out – and before you learned to use any of the powers that throne would have granted you."

" _No!"_ Father wailed. "I'm still the patriarch of this family! I've proved myself a thousand times over ever since I took the reins of power – in the eyes of my father, in the eyes of the political elite, in the eyes of the _world!_ I've enriched this family by _trillions_ of dollars! My influence won the election for the last four presidents, and my influence shut them down when they stopped supporting the Northwests! I've bankrolled political change everywhere from Bolivia to the Black Sea! Can't you see I can still be useful to you? Let me prove myself! Give me one more chance!"

"I've given you more than enough chances already, Famine," said Bill, coldly. "You've blown every single one of them – beginning with the most important one: entertaining me. Besides, if you think you signed up for just another lifetime of political puppetry and economic gamesmanship, then you're obviously in the wrong job. I don't want a patriarch; I don't even want a CEO: I want a _conqueror."_ His eyelids curved upwards in a warped approximation of a smirk. "Get ready to scream, Preston."

And with a deft wave of Bill's hand, Father was telekinetically yanked upwards off the throne, the barbed hooks immediately wrenched free of his body with a sickening _pop_ of tearing flesh. As if to add insult to injury, the next flex of telekinetic power sent him flying across the room and crashing headlong into the wall, leaving an ampersand-shaped bloodstain on the wallpaper as he bounced off and slumped to the ground. For twelve heartstopping seconds, he lay there in a bloodied heap of tortured muscles and ruined eveningwear, unmoving and quite clearly not breathing; then, drawing in a single tortured gasp for air, he very slowly curled into a foetal ball of whimpering ex-patriarch, alive but clearly in serious pain.

"Now!" Bill cackled briskly. "Let's get down to business, boys and girls: now that round two of this little game's fallen flat thanks to my failed Horseman of the Apocalypse, so it's up to one of the two Northwests left standing to take ol' Famine's place on the throne."

Pacifica very slowly looked from Bill to the now-vacant throne, which was still glistening with Father's blood and garlanded by tattered lengths of silk from his suit… and even from here, it was impossible to ignore the gibbets of shredded flesh dangling from the throne's hooks. Mother must have noticed them too, because she immediately panicked and shrieked "Pacifica should be the one! She defied Preston's orders! It's her fault that the throne's empty!"

"Ah-ah-ah!" the demented triangle chided. "I'm not accepting nominations, Madam Trophy; this isn't a democracy, in case you hadn't noticed. See, we're going to have tryouts: you and Llama-Girl will be tested on which of you have the right stuff to become the new head of the family, to see who's the most talented, the most intelligent, the most imaginative, the most ruthless, the most ambitious – and above all, the most _entertaining!_ I hope you're ready for the biggest contest of you lives, ladies, because losing means spending the rest of your life as a slave to the Northwest family – just like Famine here!"

The mere threat of enslavement was enough to get Father back on his feet again. "NO!" he roared, forcing himself upright in spite of his injuries. "I will not be enslaved: I'm the patriarch of this family – _I_ do the enslaving!"

Bill rolled his eye. "Not anymore; I'm pretty sure we'd already established the fact that your spot as head of the family and Horseman of the Apocalypse is now open. You remember that, right, Famine?"

"I AM PRESTON NATHANIEL NORTHWEST, AND YOU WILL GIVE ME BACK MY THRONE, _NOW!"_

"So much for 'owing me everything,' huh? I swear, Nathaniel didn't kick up such a ruckus when the time came for him to step down – he just choked to death, nice and quietly! Would it hurt you to act your age, or do you think it's time I started making changes on that front?"

"SHUT UP AND GIVE ME MY THRONE!" Father screamed, apoplectic with anger and pain.

Without saying a word, Bill waved a hand and sent a pulsing beam of compressed Weirdness rippling into Father's defenceless body. For a moment, he could only stand there, paralysed as the energy permeated every single facet of his being; then, he began to change: his wounds vanished instantly; his hair softened and shifted, his moustache evaporating into nothingness; his skin, once healthily-tanned by years of summer vacations in the Bahamas, suddenly turned a pale, sickly shade more commonly associated with expired milk; his perfect white teeth turned crooked and mismanaged as years of orthodontic surgery undid itself. But it wasn't until the cuffs of his shirt began to slip over his hands that the truth became apparent: Father was getting younger. Before the stunned eyes of Pacifica and her mother, Preston Northwest shrank and withered away, the once-regal stature and dignified physique melting into the underdeveloped frame of a child; his clothes grew huge on his dwindling shape, his jacket left hanging off his shoulders like a cape, his sagging pants barely staying on, his shoes big enough for him to simply step out of without even undoing the laces. By the time this startling metamorphosis was completed, the once-formidable Northwest patriarch had been replaced by a boy of no more than eight years of age, blinking down at his freshly-regressed body with a mixture of disbelief and horror.

"What did you do to me?" he shrilled, his eyes immediately full of tears.

"Good news, Llama Girl!" Bill chortled. "You now have a little brother!"

"Shut up!" Young Preston bawled. "It's not funny!"

"Watch your mouth, kiddo, or I'll take another five years off. Push your luck too far, and I'll rewrite your entire history, make it so you were never a member of the Northwest family at all: I'll leave you a beggar child in the ruins of New York, cripple you with polio and leave you just enough memory of who you used to be to mourn your loss – before you're swallowed up by the rabble."

"I don't care! I am a Northwest, and I demand you treat me with the dignity I deserve!"

"Right," Bill sighed. "I almost forgot: I already know what makes you _whimper_ …"

Young Preston's eyes bulged neurotically, his gaze suddenly shifting towards a small box sitting on a shelf just across from where Pacifica stood.

Then, without warning, he drew a handgun from his jacket. "Change me back," he ordered, "Or-"

"Or _what,_ kid? You already know there's nothing you can do to harm me!"

"-Or I'll kill them both!" Preston screamed, waving the gun in the direction of Pacifica and her mother.

For a moment, Bill was silent as the apparently defeated patriarch levelled the custom-made Desert Eagle in the direction of Pricilla Northwest's disbelieving face.

And in that moment, Pacifica acted instinctively: as soon as Preston's back was turned, she darted over to the box on the shelf, reached inside, and plucked out a palm-sized lump of electronics almost identical to a TV remote, but blank except for a single red button in the centre of it. Pacifica had no idea what this mysterious contraption could do or why it was even here, but the fact that Father appeared to be scared of it was reason enough to use it.

So, almost without thinking, she pointed the machine squarely at Preston, took careful aim, and pressed the button. Instantly, the device let out an ear-piercing shriek of discordant synthetic sound, loud enough to be heard on the other side of the study and sharp enough to make any listener's hair stand on end: it was horrific, a monstrous hybrid of fingernails on a chalkboard, a game show-style buzzer, and an angle grinder in action.

And if the sound of the buzzer was painful to everyone else, its effect on Preston was nothing short of devastating: upon hearing that nerve-jangling sound, Preston immediately dropped the gun and froze in place, hands locked by his sides, his gaze fixed on his oversized shoes, his expression terror-stricken and shamefaced.

It took Pacifica a grand total of three seconds to notice the similarities.

"Your parents did it to you too?" she asked quietly.

Preston nodded silently.

"You knew what it was like, _and you did this to me? You still used the bell on me?!"_

"I… the Northwests cannot abide a disobedient scion, Pacifica, you have to understand. The bell was necessary, just as the buzzer was necessary in my case: it made me into the man I am today, and the bell would have made you into the perfect-"

Anger flared at the back of Pacifica's mind, and she pressed the button again.

"Alright, alright, I won't say another word, I promise, just please don't use the buzzer again-"

" _Why shouldn't I?!"_ Pacifica screamed. "After everything you did to me, after everything you did to protect the precious family name, after making a deal with Bill, _after letting Dipper and Mabel die,_ I should have you pick up that gun and blow your brains out!"

"ImsorryImsorryImsorryIdidntmeanitImsorrypleasedonthurtmepleasedonthurtme…"

"Oh _shut up!_ You're not even worth the effort, because you're going to spend the rest of your life under Bill's thumb! As far as I'm concerned, that's punishment enough."

There was a pause, as the ex-patriarch finally rose from the hunched, cowering pose he'd adopted over the last few seconds, and slowly recovered his breath.

"Just hear me out for a few seconds," he wheedled. "He's chosen you and Pricilla as his newest favourites: you can make him see reason, you can make him turn me back into an adult, put me back on the throne. Please…" A ghost of his older self's anger flickered across his face, looking nothing short of pathetic on a gawky-featured eight-year-old. "I'm your father, Pacifica. Doesn't that mean something to you?"

Hatred bubbled at the back of Pacifica's mind, purer and harsher than any anger she'd felt before today. "You know what you are, Preston?" she snarled. "You're just another selfish, spoiled brat with delusions of grandeur, just like the rest of this family. I'm _done_ listening to you. Now… go stand in the corner."

"What?"

Pacifica furiously slammed her hand down on the button, sending another nerve-jangling tone from the buzzer tearing through Preston's eardrums.

"STAND IN THE CORNER!" she screamed. "NOW! FACE THE WALL AND DO NOT TURN AROUND, SIT DOWN OR EVEN TALK TO ME UNTIL YOU'VE LEARNED YOUR LESSON! YOU CAN STAY THERE UNTIL YOU PASS OUT FOR ALL I CARE!"

She took a deep breath. "I'm pretty sure that's how it went when you used the same lesson on me," she muttered breathlessly. "Now get moving."

Trembling with fear, the once-mighty Northwest patriarch shuffled awkwardly into the nearest corner of the study, and stood there with his eyes cast to the ground, bottom lip quivering as he struggled not to cry. And in the ringing silence that followed, the only sounds to be heard was the stream of muffled sobbing echoing up from Preston's corner and the spine-tingling _click_ of Bill Cipher's applause.

"Would you look at that!" he cackled. "It looks like Little Miss Llama's already taken the lead! Better get used to calling her "ma'am," Preston: one day she really will be the boss of your family!"

Pacifica sighed deeply. "But only if I continue the trial," she remarked. "And why the hell would I want to do that?"

"Because that's the only way you're ever going to see Dipper and Mabel again, obviously."

"…what?"

"Do you really think death has any real domain in my world, Pacifica Northwest? Reality is what I say it is! If I will it, life begins, continues and restarts in spite of all the things that should have kept it dead. Besides, I didn't kill them – I just copied them and killed the copies, easier than drowning kittens and beating puppies to death with their corpses. Dipper and Mabel are both still alive, playing the games I've given them… and the only way you'll see those dear old friends of yours is if you play by my rules and claim your seat on the Northwest Throne. Besides, I think you'll enjoy the things the throne can grant you – and you've got the imagination to use it, unlike your dad. You're currently in a unique pocket dimension of my own design; besides me, the only thing around here that can truly control all the powers hidden away in this private kingdom is the throne. Give a little of yourself to it, and you'll have powers beyond your wildest dreams; sit the throne itself, and live with the agony for a little while, and you'll be a demigod in your own right. You might even be able to make yourself human again. And when you see Dipper again… well, maybe you'll be able to tell him how you _really_ feel about him.

"So what'll it be, Llama Girl? A future of unlimited power as the head of the Northwest Family and my newest Horseman of the Apocalypse… or a life spent as a slave to your mom? Your choice."

* * *

Hours later, Pacifica returned to her room, almost brain-dead with exhaustion: she'd agreed to consider Bill's offer if she was at least given a full night's sleep to recover before making up her mind, and had been released to the privacy of her bedroom for the next fifteen hours to that end. Now that she was here, though, sleep was the furthest possible thing from her mind.

Now that her anger had finally had a chance to cool, she felt no victory at seeing her father humbled and laid low with his own childhood fears, only a cloying, nauseating sense of guilt: she was well aware that she'd crossed some terrible line by using the buzzer to take revenge, and the fact that she'd honestly considered forcing him to kill himself only made her feel even worse.

She hadn't been taking justified revenge on her father, not really: all she'd done was take out her long-buried frustrations on someone younger and weaker than she was, someone who'd been pleading for mercy and couldn't fight back. And according to Bill, this made her worthy of being the head of the Northwest Family – a family that had been rotten to the core from the very beginning.

Not for the first time, she was glad that the real Dipper wasn't here: he'd hate her for this, and rightly so. Already the fateful words "another link in the world's worst chain," were slowly branding themselves across the inside of her skull, and all the sleep in the world couldn't possibly erase them. And after about five seconds of soul-searching, she knew for a fact that she couldn't accept Bill's offer… but she couldn't turn it down, either: refusal and slavery meant going back to square one, becoming the Old Pacifica all over again; accepting the offer and seizing the power of the throne might give her enough power to do some good, see Dipper and Mabel again… but would she be able to look them in the eye when they finally met?

And it was at that moment, just as Pacifica was just about ready to scream, that she happened to notice an envelope – a _doll-_ sized envelope, no less – sitting right on the edge of her bed; clambering up the side of the mattress, she opened it up and drew out a small folded letter marked with professional-looking insignia. Most of them were blurred and instinct, as if poorly copied and printed, but the text itself was perfectly legible.

 _Dear Pacifica_ , it read.

 _Don't despair: you're a far better person than you think you are, and the fact that you still feel guilt means that you're leaps and bounds ahead of any other member of the Northwest family. And Bill may seem to hold the winning hand, but there's another side to his game that even he isn't aware of. He thinks nobody can enter or escape his little playgrounds, but his tinkering with reality creates loopholes that I can sneak through – and you can too. You're the first player that I've found, but you definitely won't be the last, and together, we can defeat him once and for all._

 _Unfortunately, I can only communicate with you while Bill's attention's diverted elsewhere, so I'll make this brief: this might sound crazy, but accepting his offer might be the only way that we can beat him at his own game; the throne will grant you power, just as Bill said – and it might confer enough to help you escape and fight back. Just don't give_ all _of yourself to it: once you take a seat in that throne and seize all its powers, you belong to Bill. Take only as much power as you need to break out._

 _And my name?_

… _well, just call me Mr A._

 _Until we meet again:_ _ **Ave Atque Vale.**_

* * *

A/N: Up next - Gideon's game!


	7. Innate Ability

A/N: Latest chapter, ladies and gents!

 **A very angry ravage:** It actually took me a while to get the reference, but now I have new reading material to get through - thanks, by the way. But no, it's not Alcor. There will be crossovers in this story, but not kind of crossover. Sorry.

 **Kraven the Hunter:** One of the ironies here is the fact that, unlike Dipper, Mabel, Soos and Wendy, Pacifica never clashed with Bill or his forces up until the end of Weirdmageddon - making this game much less personal despite the sadism. In fact, most of the game has been set up for the Northwests as a whole, with Preston as the chief contestant: if Preston had been dissatisfied with the current arrangement and wanted another throw of the dice, Pacifica would have indeed been forced to loop the night again... but Preston committed the cardinal sin of being boring, so Bill has Pacifica prepped take his place, not suspecting that she might be more than just another selfish member of the Northwest clan.

Also, the use of the Latin is for two reasons: Mr A is technically bidding farewell to a member of Gravity Fall's nobility, hence the ave - literally translated as "hail" (plus the Northwests strike me as the kind of family who'd set themselves up with a pretentious Latin motto; they'd have probably gone with _Orbis Non Sufficit_ if Ian Fleming hadn't bagsied it first); however, it's also a nod to the fact that this quest might very well end up with all its participants dead or worse, as the original and most famous usage of the saying is a formal farewell to the deceased.

Plus, I also added it as a shoutout to _Event Horizon._ Couldn't resist, sorry.

 **Northgalus 2002:** Glad you liked the chapter! Can't make too many comments about Mr A without spoiling; however, there will be several hints scattered across the incoming chapters - you'll have to be the judge of how subtle they are.

 **Fantasy Fan 223:** Your reviews always bring a smile to my face. Yes, Bill _can_ be defeated, but the trick will be - as always - getting that far. Without saying too much, defeated doesn't necessarily mean "dead" or even "gone."

Anyway! Time's up, game's on, good luck, have fun! Detailed reviews are a must! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: _Gravity Falls_ doesn't belong to me. The reality warpers and time travellers tell me that this has always been the case.

19/6/17: Made corrections - massive typo close to the end finally gone; stupid of me to not notice it sooner.

* * *

The shantytown was always cold.

Built from scrap metal, cardboard boxes, plywood boards and a few hastily-scavenged tents, it was simply too rickety to keep the chill at bay, no matter how many fires the inhabitants built or how many blankets they piled on. Granted, it would have been just as hellish in the summer, but then, summer didn't exist in this strange, unnatural place.

Snow poured down on the settlement at all hours of the day; blizzards hammered it; gale-force winds sliced through it, extinguishing fires, tearing poorly-built shacks to pieces, tossing pedestrians to the ground, and sending frigid blasts of air under doors and windows from one end of the settlement to the next. The crude streets were always choked with snowdrifts, the roofs of the buildings sagging under their ponderous weight, the doorways clustered with icicles, and every single survivor who'd made this terrible place their home was cold, hungry and miserable – and always would be, for winter was here to stay.

Now that Weirdmageddon was everywhere, the usual procession of seasons had long since ceased to exist on planet Earth, replaced by demented spates of unnatural weather appearing and disappearing almost entirely at random. However, in this part of the once-United States of America, winter remained eternal for the sole purpose of making day-to-day existence a living hell for the survivors who'd made the mistake of settling here – wherever here was.

This could have once been the outskirts of New York city, or Chicago, or Los Angeles or Detroit or New Orleans or any decent-sized city in the country; it could have been a chunk of another continent transplanted onto North America; or perhaps it hadn't existed before Weirdmageddon, and all those tumbledown skyscrapers on the horizon had been created as just another one of Bill Cipher's indecipherable jokes. Nobody knew the truth: all they could tell was that this sad little Hooverville stood in the shadow of a vast ruined city half-buried in the ice, its frost-smothered streets clogged with wrecked cars, its buildings slowly collapsing under the sheer weight of the snow.

Every day, the residents of the shantytown ventured into those ruins to scavenge for necessities – food, building supplies, warm clothing, and fuel for the perpetually dwindling fires. Others decided to hunt for their food instead of foraging for it, and strode off into the frozen wastelands beyond the urban zone in search of more nourishing sustenance, armed with whatever weaponry they could find. Sometimes, hunters and foragers alike would return laden down with just enough spoils to keep the village running for another couple of days; sometimes, they returned empty-handed; sometimes, they never returned at all. More often than not, the villagers would have to go without, and be even colder and hungrier and more miserable than usual – until the next day, when they set off in search of supplies once again; fights over food were common, and it wasn't unknown for someone to end up getting killed in the ensuing brawls.

But no matter how many people were killed in bawls, how many were mauled to death on hunting expeditions, how many were buried in avalanches, how many died of starvation or exposure or sickness, there were always _more people_. Somehow, even in the face of raging blizzards and ten-foot-deep snowdrifts, fresh refugees always found their way to the shantytown; typically, there wasn't enough space to accommodate them and a new shack would have to be built just to keep them from freezing to death in the streets overnight.

Some refugees attempted to be accommodating and move on after a few days, but the weather was always against them – quite literally: storms and blizzards actively sought out anyone attempting to leave the settlement for any reason except to hunt, howling gales sweeping the would-be escapees back down the hill all the way to the gates. Sooner or later, the refugees would be forced to accept that the once-inviting sanctuary had become their prison, and settle in forever – or die in continued escape attempt, either from exposure to torturous weather continues or from whatever hungry monsters haunted the snowfields at night.

Slowly but surely, the shantytown was growing, always in size and never in prosperity, always growing hungrier and angrier and more and more desperate as the days went by and the population ballooned.

And that was what bothered Gideon Gleeful more than anything else: not the cold, not the hunger, not the smell of the overflowing latrine pit, not even the fear of discovery, but the people. The chill in the air only became noticeable on the rare occasions when he _wasn't_ feverish, and he was usually too sick to even _think_ about food, let alone keep it down. There were far too many things to distract him from less-than-pleasant smells, and the shantytown's residents were too busy struggling to stay alive to care about his past; besides, most of them obeyed Bill's occasional commands the moment they were issued, so they probably wouldn't give a damn even if they did find out.

But people?

People had _thoughts._

* * *

 _HungryhungryhungryohgodImhungrynobodybroughtbackanythingshestolemyshareImsohungry_

 _Thefiresareouttheresnothingtoburnwerealloutofblanketsitssocoldwereallgoingtofreezesoon_

 _DaddysgonehewentouttohuntandidntcomebackImsoalonepleasesdontleavemeherepleaseplease_

Gideon closed his eyes, bracing himself against the oncoming rush of thoughts; the hunters and foragers were back from their daily outing, and the calm that their absence had offered was immediately shattered now that the village was once again full-populated by hungry, frozen, desperate minds.

Despite his best efforts, he couldn't stop himself from whimpering as the pain rippled across his skull, prompting immediate reassurance from his current minder – a kindly, middle-aged woman by the name of Amanda. For the next few minutes, he could only lie there and cling to the pillow, quivering in agony whilst the psychic storm rained down upon him, trying in vain to filter out the worst of it until he could acclimatize to the sudden rise in village-wide mental activity.

Amanda was holding his hand and gently mopping his fevered brow with a sponge, but Gideon scarcely noticed through the haze of chaotic thoughts swirling around him. Right then and there, he was no longer lying on a bed in a semi-frozen shack, shrouded in blankets and waited on by conscientious attendants; right then and there, he was trapped inside his own head, alone except for over two hundred whispering, murmuring, yelling, shouting, screaming voices echoing across his cranium.

 _WhostolemyblanketsomeonestolemyblanketIllsmashhisheadinwithacardoorthesonofabitch_

 _Notenoughantibioticsnotenoughmedicinethefeversaregettingworsethepatientsaredyingandwerenext_

 _Ohgodpleasehavemercyonusforgiveusoursinspleasedeliverusfromthisnightmarepleasegodgodgodgod_

How long had he been here?

Two days? A week? A month? It couldn't have been any longer than six months, but with Gideon's brain in its current condition, the passage of time was almost impossible to gauge: hours felt like days and days blurred past like minutes, and in the very worst telepathic influxes, it was almost impossible to remember how he'd gotten as far as the shantytown. But he _had_ to remember; losing his grip on the memory meant losing another piece of his sanity and he'd already lost far too much of it already to sickness and telepathy and all the indignities this hellhole could possibly throw at him.

So, he braced himself against the onslaught, and forced himself to recall how this had all began.

He remembered waking up in the Fearamid, human again after god only knew how many days spent as a tapestry. Bill had been hovering over him, laughing about new forms of entertainment he wanted to try: most of this "entertainment" had involved Gideon dancing barefoot on a floor of bullet ants, screaming himself hoarse as the vicious little insects stung him from heel to toe; after a while, his throat couldn't manage another sound, and he'd been forced to continue dancing in agonized silence until the paralytic venom kicked in, leaving him to slump to the floor – _facefirst into the ants._ The whole thing had ended with Gideon as a moaning, whimpering, twitching, incontinent heap that Bill had cheerfully shovelled into a cell for the rest of the day, set to do the whole grisly dance the next morning. Of course, once Bill realized that Gideon had lost all sensation in his feet, he lost interest in this particular show and decided to try something new.

Gideon's last clear memory – before his brain began turning itself inside out – was the sight of Bill Cipher floating towards him, his arms outstretched and fingers ablaze with electric-blue flames. "Don't struggle, Li'l Gideon," he'd purred. "I'm not going to hurt ya. I'm just helping you live up to your reputation… and while I'm about it, I'm giving you **EVERYTHING YOU'VE EVER WANTED."**

And in the next instant, Bill's daggerlike fingertips phased through his skull and sunk deep into his brain, and Gideon had been all but consumed by a searing, boiling agony that started somewhere in the very centre of his head and rippled down his nerves to every corner of his body. In hindsight, he realized that Bill had been directly altering the structure of his brain, prompting the growth of new lobes under a concentrated bombardment of Weirdness energy, developing new sensory horizons throughout his body while deliberately ensuring immediate trauma to his nervous system. The process of alteration lasted less than a minute, but it felt like eons to him, hundreds upon thousands of years spent burning alive in the depths of his own psyche.

Then, just as quickly as it had arrived, the pain had simply faded away, leaving Gideon slumped on the throne room floor, debilitated but alive.

" **I GIVE YOU** _ **TRUE POWER,"**_ Bill had proclaimed triumphantly.

Gideon had opened his mouth to ask what the hell he was talking about – but before the first word could leave his mouth, _the_ _voices_ had descended upon him from all corners of the room, deafening him with their intensity and leaving him gripped by a new kind of pain entirely, a pain that transcended physical sensation and assaulted him in the depths of his own mind. Suddenly, the minds of everyone in the Fearamid were open to him, from the lowliest of the prisoners all the way up to Bill Cipher himself: their hopes and dreams, their hidden appetites and secret lusts, their ambitions and aspirations, their plans for revenge and screeds of self-loathing, every single thought – no matter how banal – was there for him to read in exacting detail.

For the first time in his entire life, Gideon really was a psychic, just as he'd pretended for so many years.

Bill had gifted him with the awful power of telepathy.

And _it couldn't be switched off._

He couldn't even slow it down; it was always on, no matter how hard Gideon tried to focus his energies on silencing the deafening chorus of voices that assaulted him. With an effort of will, he could refrain from reading memories and deeper trains of cognition, but the surface thoughts of others could not be denied: as soon as a mind entered his presence, he would have no choice but to let its thoughts crash down upon him like a tsunami and try not to get washed away.

Those first few minutes almost killed him: reading the minds of slaves and prisoners and all manner of other human victims was torturous enough; reading the minds of the Henchmaniacs left him a drooling, sobbing mess; reading the mind of _Bill Cipher_ almost killed him. The omnipotent triangle's merest thoughts had been too vast, too violent, too corrosive for him to bear, and had left Gideon crumpled on the floor, teetering on the brink of total psychic meltdown.

In probability, that was why Bill had exiled him to this frozen hellhole: he didn't want Gideon to die before the fun could really begin. Or at least, he had to assume so; he lost consciousness shortly after that first mind-reading had concluded, and his fledgling ESP had left him with a very shaky grasp on what was actually happening.

All he knew was that he awoke to the sound of howling wind and the first inklings of winter chill in the air, and opened his eyes just in time to see the Fearamid floating away – leaving him stranded in the middle of a vast snowfield, hemmed in on one side by immensely steep hills and on the other side by the ruins of a once-prosperous city. Or at least, he had to assume it had once been prosperous: it was almost too dark to tell at that point. In other regions of the conquered planet, the sky was red as blood and the sun glared down with all the intensity of Bill's own baleful gaze; here, night bloomed deeper and darker than ever before. And of course, he'd arrived right in the middle of a blizzard. Back then, Gideon had still noticed the cold, especially given that he wasn't dressed for the weather: in all his years, he'd never experienced a winter this cold, not even on the rare occasions when the central heating had failed; this was a frost that tore into him like a thousand tiny needles; this was so cold, it _burned._

So, with only his tattered suit to protect him from the cold, he'd sought out shelter – and found it the form of the shantytown, by that stage little more than a tiny cluster of ramshackle buildings sitting right in the middle of the snowfield, its scrap-metal walls almost buried by the blizzard. Cold, hungry and disoriented, he'd made a beeline for the encampment as fast as his feet could carry him, not realizing his mistake until the first miserable thoughts of the inhabitants began echoing towards him. And by then, it was already too late to turn back, too late to go looking for another shelter amidst the hills or the ruins: turning back would mean freezing to death, alone and unmourned and likely never found until the thaw finally set in. So, Gideon had marched up to the shantytown gates, and despite the clamour of voices roaring from within, knocked on the door – and awoke the sleeping villagers. Though there'd only been about forty or fifty people living in the shantytown at the time, the sheer volume of wide-awake thoughts flooding in on him had been enough to leave him quivering in the snow, paralysed as the curious refugees hauled him inside.

They'd taken him in quite readily, apparently having never heard of Sheriff Gideon or anything that had happened in Gravity Falls; all they knew was that he was a child in need of help. True, they'd asked questions, but Gideon's telepathy had left him almost incapable of forming sentences and his throat hadn't quite recovered from his last screaming ordeal anyway; as such, the most he'd been able to provide them with was his own name and a few hoarse whispers before he'd lost consciousness again.

So, having no reason to suspect him, they'd given him a bed, some hot soup, and some reasonably qualified carers to look after him – "reasonably qualified" meaning that they'd once been parents and were desperate to ease the sense of loss, as Gideon soon learned firsthand. After a grand total of five minutes spent being incessantly mothered by the team of cheek-pinching babysitters assigned to him, he'd been about ready to lose his mind, but thanks to his throat, he couldn't tell them to leave him alone.

In between hugs and kisses, he'd tried to tell the villagers he couldn't stay with them: their thoughts were constant and merciless and tore into his head with all the ferocity of a vulture tearing into a carcass; just being around people _hurt_. But even once he was able to get around his throat problems by finding a notepad and pen, none of the refugees were willing to let a ten-year-old child out into the wilderness, so they ignored him, or told him he could "find your mommy and daddy later," completely overlooking the fact that he couldn't have given a damn about either of his parents. And when he tried to explain his newfound telepathy to them, they'd dismissed it as the symptoms of some kind of illness, telling him "you're just feverish, dear."

Two days later, he really was feverish. Not so surprising, considering that people spent most of their days huddled together for warmth and rarely had enough water to spare for showers or a decent waste disposal method. And because medical supplies were scarce and medical professionals even fewer, the most the refugees could do for him was to keep him rested and attended to at all times. So, Gideon had been left to suffer through his illness and his own telepathy, carefully secluded from all but the closest of his carers to prevent the disease from spreading.

For god only knew how long, he'd lain there, sweating, whimpering and sobbing as the illness raged over him and the thoughts of others rained down on him like hailstones. And all the while, everyone treated him with an almost sickening degree of care: on the rare occasions when foragers located medicine, he got the first dose, being easily the sickest of all the shantytown's residents. When the hunters found food, he had the lion's share – not that it mattered much. Most of his meals were puked up before the day was through. And yet, in spite of everything that this place threw at him – the ever-present starvation, the fights that sometimes broke out between the residents, the monsters that occasionally preyed on sleeping villagers, the diseases that had claimed so many lives among his fellow refugees, the all-consuming cold, and the influx of crushing thoughts – somehow, Gideon survived.

But was that any surprise?

After all the trouble Bill had gone to keep him here in the shantytown, he wasn't going to let him die – not when there was so much more suffering for him to endure.

* * *

 _Morepeoplealwaysmorenotenoughspacetoomanymouthtofeedtheyllbedeadsoonwiththerestofus_

 _TheysayBillCiphersbeenseenintheareaohgoddoesthatmeanhesgoingtoputustoworkortortureusor_

 _Gideonsstillsickpoorkidhemustbesoscaredofdyingwherearehisparentswishwecouldhelphimsomehow_

 _WhatsinthiscrateantibioticsitsmarkedwiththeredcrossbutitcouldbeanythingreallybutIcanhopeforusall_

After what felt like hours, the torrent of thoughts receded, as the hunters settled back into their huts and Gideon slowly acclimatized to the level of mental activity.

Bit by bit, he found himself gently drifting back towards reality – or what passed for reality these days. One way or another, he was out of his skull and back in the ramshackle little den that had been his home for however long it had been since he'd ended up here, surrounded on all sides by the all-encompassing aromas of chilled sweat, body odour, dried blood, fresh vomit, and backed-up toilets. Most of it had been produced entirely by him, but the clogged WC smell was from outside, the results of the latrine pits overflowing for the third day in a row. Gideon would have covered his nose if he'd had the strength to move his arms, but the latest bout of illness and telepathic trauma had left his muscles so rubbery from strain that he couldn't do much more than writhe and groan loudly.

Immediately, Amanda slid into view and began mopping Gideon's fevered with a damp cloth. "It's okay, sweetie," she soothed. "It's all going to be okay. You just lie back and relax: there'll be some medicine here for you soon, and you'll be up and about before you know it. Everything's going to be okay."

She smiled, obviously doing her best to reassure him. But Gideon could tell she could tell she was lying: even with so many trains of thought echoing in from outside the shack, he could clearly hear Amanda's mind whispering _thefeversworsetodayhesevensickerthaneverbeforepoorchild._

Gideon let out an involuntary whimper of pain as the thoughts sliced deep into his brain, obviously loud enough for Amanda to hear, because she immediately leaned over and enveloped him in a hug.

"It's okay, Gideon," she whispered gently. "Mandy's here for you. You're gonna be just fine."

And after god only knew how many months of this treatment, Gideon wanted nothing more than to scream _I don't_ _ **care**_ _if you're are here for me, you condescending bitch! I'm not helpless, you silly cow: I've wielded powers beyond your wildest imaginings, I've summoned dream demons, I've piloted giant robots, I've been to prison and won over the inmates, I've decided the course of elections, and I've led an entire gang of Discount Auto Warriors to battle against Bill Cipher himself! At ten years old, I'm more of an adult than you'll ever be! I don't want people hovering over me every minute of the day, treating me like I'm a baby – I WANT SOME GODDAMN PEACE AND QUIET! For the love of Christ, just leave me alone! Go out and find some meds for my fever, go look for your missing kids, go find a comb for that godawful perm, just get the hell out of my life and while you're about it, tell all those mouthbreathing morons outside to drown themselves in the latrine!_

But of course, he couldn't. He could only groan incoherently, and wince as his throat – rasped red-raw by screaming and infection – clenched in pain.

"I know, honey, I know – it hurts."

 _Not as much as_ _ **you'd**_ _hurt if I could punch you in the face,_ he snarled silently.

There was a yell from somewhere outside, and Amanda glanced over at the door, eyes lighting up. "You hear that, Gideon?" she cooed. "They found something! The scavengers found some medicine! You're gonna be okay!"

Gideon, who'd heard people thinking about the medicine as soon as it arrived at the camp, rolled his eyes. In all honesty, Amanda's constant mother hen-clucking would have been more bearable if the woman had been lying through her teeth with every word, but telepathy put that perception to rest right away: she really did care, and the saccharine-sweet parental doting grated on nerves already scraped bloody by months of compressed torture.

"I'm just gonna go out and check to see if there's anything for the fever there," Amanda said hurriedly. "I'll be back in just a second, okay?"

And with that, she hurried away, leaving Gideon alone in the shack for the first time in hours; from outside, a commotion arose as the refugees began fussing over the contents of the newly-arrived medicine crates, most of the discussion almost indecipherable to the human ear. Gideon, however, could trace the path of every single conversation through the thoughts of the participants – whether he wanted to or not, as it happened.

So, desperate for something, _anything_ to take his mind off the brain-pummelling onslaught of psychic noise, he did the least-advisable thing he could have possibly done under the circumstances: he pushed aside his blankets and got out of bed. It took ten whole minutes of marshalling his strength, but eventually he was able to force himself upright and off the mattress, tottering to his feet on legs that felt as limp and useless as deflated old tyres, and made a beeline for the basin and the mirror standing in the corner.

He knew he shouldn't be up and about in his current condition, but at this point, he hadn't gotten a good look at himself in days; true, narcissism should have been the furthest thing from his mind at that point, what with agonizing telepathy and crippling fevers bearing down on him, but he had to know just how badly the last few days had affected him – if he looked as bad as he felt, in other words.

Unsurprisingly, he looked like hell: staring back at him from the mirror was a withered ghost of his former self, a diseased pile of human wreckage haphazardly assembled into a rough approximation of a living being. His clothes – the once-immaculate baby-blue suit that he'd adored ever since he'd first set eyes on it – were ruined, hanging off his frame in tatters, the jacket torn down the back, his shirt befouled with puke and blood and god only knew what else, the trousers gone at the knees and shredded at the calves, his shoes ripped open (hence why they were currently sitting under the bed). In fact, the only reason why nobody had replaced them was because there simply weren't any remaining clothes to replace them _with._

But as bad as the clothes looked, they were just intact enough for Gideon to realize that they no longer fitted him: he'd lost weight – a lot of it.

Low food supplies and the rigors of the fever had left him terrifyingly emaciated: his formerly plump frame had shrivelled away, leaving his limbs stick-thin mockeries of their former selves, his once-chubby neck a shrunken stalk surmounted by a jutting chin and a daggerlike set of cheekbones, his ample gut _gone._ Opening his shirt, he found that he could actually see his ribs standing out like grasping claws in the ruin of his chest, the skin of his torso drawn so tightly across them that it looked as though they might tear through his paper-thin flesh at the slightest touch. And where once his upturned nose had led some uncharitable mouth-breathers to compare him to a pig, now it seemed more like the nasal cavity of a skull; fitting really, given just how deathly the rest of him looked.

And his _hair…_ he was going bald! His pompadour was gone! The elegantly-sculpted quiff that had won him the adoration of Gravity Falls was reduced to a series of greasy whips layered sparsely across his bare scalp! For several minutes, Gideon could only gape in horror at the ruins of his beautiful hair, frantically running his skeletal fingers through the wispy strands that were now all that separated him from total baldness. He'd had a feeling something was wrong when he'd noticed the clumps of hair he'd shed on the pillow, but he'd no idea it was _this_ bad.

In the end, he was so shell-shocked that he almost didn't notice the words scrawled in yellow paint on the wall of the shack just above the mirror.

HERE'S A RIDDLE FOR YOU, GIDEON, the graffiti blared. HOW CAN SOMETHING SO POWERFUL BE SO HELPLESS? HOW CAN SOMEONE SO IMPRESSIVE BE SO IMPOTENT? HOW CAN YOU RISE SO HIGH AND FALL SO LOW? HERE'S A HINT: LOOK IN THE MIRROR.

There was no sign of who'd written this little message, but Gideon didn't need answers at that point: the yellow paint and the slight glow to the letters were all the confirmation he needed. Bill Cipher was having fun with this game, alright. But why suggest he was powerful when he quite clearly wasn't? What kind of power was this when he-

His eyes widened.

 _Bill, you brilliant, hateful, magnificent bastard._

This was the punchline to Bill's horrific joke: just as he'd mockingly promised, he'd given Gideon the means of living up to his reputation, and he'd given Gideon true power, just as he'd said he would. Here in the camp, he had an entire community of people who knew nothing of what had happened in Gravity Falls and were willing to accept him without question, an army of fawning cretins waiting on him hand and foot. With telepathy, an entire universe of empowering information lay at his fingertips, just waiting to be exploited: names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card details, bank accounts, tax returns, resumes, therapy sessions, criminal records, past infidelities and plans for the future, hidden fears and secret lusts, childhood dreams and desperate hopes, and so, _so_ many scandalous double lives – everything from affairs to thievery, from fraud to murder. Here _in this very shantytown_ were no than fifteen car thieves, three burglars, ten unpunished murderers, twelve tax cheats, nine adulterers, and a serial killer. Everyone in the camp had secrets, and they were all Gideon's for the taking.

And none of it – _absolutely none of it_ – was worth a damn.

He couldn't profit from any of these details: he couldn't prove that he wasn't just delirious and hallucinating, he couldn't confirm any of his allegations without stand-up-in-court proof, and besides, what the hell could any of these people give him in return for his silence? He was already being given everything he could possibly need, and thanks to the shortages, there wasn't much to give anyway. More to the point, who in their right mind would care about things like tax fraud and bribery _now?_ What pull did facts like credit card numbers have after the apocalypse? Even the army of adoring adults only cared about him because he was a sick child; none of them would actually take orders from him, even if he had the voice to _give_ orders, and trying to blackmail any of them could only end with him getting kicked out – or killed.

Here he was, blessed with the kind of power he'd always wanted, gifted with abilities that could have made him a god among men before Weirdmageddon had dawned, but now the only thing they bought him was crippling headaches, hair loss, helplessness, and mind-numbing futility.

 _Just as well he didn't decide to give you Mabel,_ a smartassed voice at the back of Gideon's head remarked. _You'd have probably ended up with her corpse._

Come to think of it, where _was_ Mabel? Where was Dipper and Stan Pines and Ford and all the other participants of that failed assault on the Fearamid? Where were Ghost Eyes and the rest of his convict friends? Were they all being subjected to more of Bill's ghastly practical jokes?

And, now that Bill had delivered the punchline to his latest gag, what was in store for Gideon next?

As if in answer, there was a distant hubbub of activity from somewhere outside the shack, and the thoughts of the shantytown immediately erupted into motion once more, forcing Gideon to his knees as the blizzard of buzzing minds raged overhead.

 _Someonenewforchriststakeanothermouthtofeedanotherloseronagoddamnmountainoflosers_

 _OhdammitandtheyvegotWOUNDEDtoowereallscrewedwoundedandUNCONSCIOUShowarewesupposedtodealwiththiscrap_

 _Thefatonesstillgothiswallettooforsomereasonletstakealookhhmmbudgleeful_

Caught in the act of bracing himself against the foot of the bed, Gideon paused in mid-cringe, hastily re-reading the last few seconds of mental outflow.

 _budgleeful_

Bud Gleeful?

 _Father_ was here?

In spite of himself, Gideon staggered to his feet and shambled out through the shack door, into the snow-smothered morass of wrecked cars and abandoned luggage that composed the settlement's "town square." The force of the wind and the chill in the air almost sent him crashing to the ground again, but through an effort of purest will, Gideon forced himself to carry on; he _had_ to investigate, to see what was happening for his own eyes – if only to assuage his curiosity, if only to convince himself that he was still capable of independent movement.

Just inside the crude scrap-metal gates, a gaggle of residents had gathered around a newly-arrived party of refugees, most of whom were almost unrecognizable as human beings under the heavy layers of furs and baggage they wore. However, perhaps five of their number were currently laid out on stretchers, having collapsed at some point over the course of their journey, and even at a distance, there was no mistaking Bud Gleeful's still-imposing bulk.

From what little he could tell, his father wasn't hurt or sick, though he'd clearly lost a few pounds after spending a few months roaming the wilderness – nowhere near as much as Gideon, lucky bastard. According to the other refugees, he'd just collapsed from exhaustion like the rest of the stretcher-bound, and a quick look at father's mind revealed thoughts pretty consistent with dreaming.

And yet, something was quite clearly _wrong_ : his mind was… damaged, somehow.

The thought constructs that composed ordinary human personalities were hopelessly scarred and bruised, as if someone had taken a pair of ice cleats and gone tap-dancing all over those fragile blocks of psyche; true, there were signs that the wounds were starting to heal, but the damage was still nothing short of horrific. And his _memories!_ The memory centres of his brain were riddled with hundreds of ragged holes, pockmarked with infected-looking craters disturbingly reminiscent of mouldering Swiss cheese. Anyone with this kind of psychic scarring had to be permanently brain damaged, if not harbouring a case of early-onset psychosis... and most bewildering of all, from what little Gideon could sense, this wasn't a new problem: father had been suffering from this condition for _years._

Nothing could directly explain this condition: there was no memory of what had bored these holes in father's psyche. Indirectly however, Gideon found himself tracing the path of memories leading up to those gaping craters, and finding faint recollections of…

 _Himself._

In the lead-up to each psychic injury, father always had at least one negative memory of Gideon somewhere in the last twenty-four hours. Most were badly warped from the psychic scarring, and though there were recent signs of healing in process, they hadn't healed enough for father to properly remember. However, telepathy allowed Gideon to piece together these mangled bits of memories and bring them rippling into sharp relief: Gideon screaming at him, Gideon smacking him in the face, Gideon throwing something at the wall, Gideon threatening him – an endless collage of snapshots of Gideon's tantrums held together with diseased psychic tissue.

 _I did that to him,_ Gideon realized, with a thrill of horror. _No, worse than that, I made him do it to_ _ **himself.**_

Bill Cipher had talked a great deal about the Memory Gun in the days following his conquest of Earth, ranting and raving about how Stan and Ford had tried to use it over the course of a botched assassination attempt – even remarking on the brain damage it had done to Old Man McGucket over the years. Had father used the gun on _himself,_ all to wipe his memories of Gideon's tantrums?

In the past, Gideon had been able to ignore the suffering of others with ease, even when it was paraded before him in detail that other people might find excruciating, but now that it was _inside his own head_ and impossible to shut out, even he couldn't help but feel something almost akin to guilt. _Was_ it guilt? It'd been so long since he'd last felt real remorse – he couldn't even remember when or even recognize it when he felt it, but…

 _Justkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuuming_

Gideon's eyes very slowly strayed to the crumpled figure lying prone in the next stretcher; drawing back the blanket, he caught a glimpse of prematurely-greying hair, and knew at once that this had to be his mother. From the looks of things, she was only just beginning to regain consciousness, hence the sudden noticeable rise in mental activity.

 _Justkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuuming_

Gideon shuddered. Why was she thinking like this? It didn't seem connected with reality in any way, unless-

 _Justkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepwaitwhereamiwhereisthis_

Mother's eyes flickered open, and she very slowly sat up in the stretcher – and noticed Gideon.

Her eyes widened in horror.

 _OH MY GOD IT'S HIM NO NO NO OH GOD SOMEONE PLEASE HELP HE'LL HURT ME HE'LL HURT ME HE'LL HURT ME JUST KEEP VACUUMING JUST KEEP VACUUMING JUST KEEP VACUUMING!_

Gideon lurched away from the stretcher, mind reeling from the psychic backlash. Outwardly, mother was still sitting perfectly still on the stretcher, her face a blank mask of fear; inwardly, her mind was howling in terror, flailing blindly as she struggled to get to grips with where she was and what she was seeing.

 _PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE I'M SORRY I DIDN'T MEAN IT DON'T HIT ME I'M SORRY GIDEON I'M SORRY I'LL SHUT UP NOW I'LL JUST KEEP VACUUMING I WASN'T TOO LOUD WAS I JUST KEEP VACUUMING!_

"There you are!" said Amanda's voice, somewhere back in the real world. "You're not supposed to be outside, Gideon, you're not even meant to be out of bed…"

But Gideon barely heard her; mother's telepathic screaming drew him in, a maelstrom of mental activity dragging him closer to its demented epicentre, shutting out all external stimuli along the way. He knew he should look away; he should leave and let mother's panic fade away before the pain in his head got any worse, but he couldn't bring himself to ignore the chaos unfolding before his mind's eye. He could see mother's memories, the same collection of abusive encounters that dad had exhibited, but far uglier and far more disturbing… and something was emerging from them, a single image getting clearer and clearer as mother's terror grew.

 _NO NO NO GET AWAY FROM ME I'M SCARED DON'T DO IT TO ME AGAIN PLEASE I'LL DO ANYTHING JUST KEEP VACUUMING!_

And then the image popped into view: it was Gideon himself – as mother saw him.

Feelings surged from mother's brain into his, overwhelming the emotional centres of his brain and flooding his head with wild, unreasoning panic. All of a sudden, Gideon was screaming out loud, hollering as loudly as his tortured throat could handle.

"Gideon!" Amanda cried. "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Jesus Christ, he's bleeding!" someone shouted. "He must have bust his nose open-"

"Oh screw his nose, look at his eyes! _He's bleeding from the eyes!"_

"God, it's everywhere! It's coming out of his ears now!"

"Someone get a medic!"

"Gideon, talk to me – tell me what's the matter –"

He took a deep breath, finally managing to stop himself from screaming. He wanted to tell Amanda everything he'd just seen and heard; he wanted to tell her that it was his fault that they were trapped here; he wanted to tell her he'd never felt so guilty in his entire life and he desperately wanted to stop before his head exploded; he wanted to tell her that he wanted to be treated like an adult, just for a little while, just so he could feel as though he had a _little_ power of his own; he wanted to tell her that he was tired and sick and miserable and missed everyone from Gravity Falls (hateful mouth-breathers that they were); he wanted to confess every confused, muddled thought in his head… and he wanted to tell everyone to stop thinking for just a minute because all the thoughts _outside_ his head were now almost too much to bear.

But all that emerged was a hoarse croak of "Just keep vacuuming," before Gideon finally toppled over in a dead faint, landing bonelessly in Amanda's arms.

* * *

Sometime later, Gideon awoke to find himself back in his hovel, firmly tucked into bed and battered on all sides by the thoughts of the newly-settled arrivals. Little had changed since his last visit, except for the fact that his bedsheets were significantly bloodier than before, and Amanda had fallen asleep in a chair next to him – Gideon's right hand still reassuringly clasped in her hands.

 _Well,_ he thought, _that was the next phase of Bill's joke, I suppose. Now I'm imprisoned alongside people whose thoughts are even more painful than most. What's next? A monster attack? A sudden change in climate? Capture by brain-eating aliens from the Inner Outer Reaches who want to make me their slave? Please don't answer this question._

Sitting up in bed, he immediately found himself struggling with the urge to cry; suddenly, everything he'd just experienced seemed too much for him, and he desperately wanted (A hug? Power? To pretend everything was normal? WHAT?!)

And then, just as he was trying to think of what he wanted, something directly beneath him crinkled loudly, and he shifted his seating to discover a rumpled paper hidden just under his pillow. It was in a sorry state after being creased and crushed under him, but it had clearly once been a piece of official-looking correspondence, complete with impressive letterheads and emblems. Most of these insignia were almost illegible, as if poorly photocopied or ruined by rain, and yet they seemed curiously familiar to Gideon. With his head in its current condition, he couldn't quite place it, but the emblems seemed to bring back vague memories of his time in prison… or was it the time of the election? He couldn't be sure.

 _Dear Gideon,_ it read.

 _Read this quickly. Bill's attention's been diverted while he plans out the next stage of your torture, but he won't be long; you'd best brace yourself for the worst – it's going to be nastier than usual this time, and you're still only at the threshold._

 _My point is this – try looking at your condition another way. Muscles tear when exerted, but eventually heal, stronger and better than ever before. The mind is a muscle as well. Bill doesn't think you can ever develop the psychic fortitude to withstand the thoughts of others, nor does he think the powers he forced on you could develop in unforeseen directions: he is wrong._

 _He wants you to succumb to despair, to wallow in self-pity. You must resist. Plunge yourself into the thoughts of others, endure the pain, and you will find greater vistas of control than he ever thought you could achieve… and perhaps much more than that._

 _Remember, Bill isn't totally omniscient anymore. Now that he's out of the nightmare realm and distanced from the Mindscape, he can only see in one direction at a time; remember how surprised he was by the Shacktron, and use that to your advantage._

 _Also, you mightn't be able to blackmail others, but you can certainly_ inspire _them. Stop thinking of them as marks, and start thinking of them as people: you know their hopes and dreams, and you know how to motivate them. In time, you might have the makings of an army… but first you have to help them survive long enough to be armed, and find a way out of the snowfields. Here's a hint: you'll find it in the ruins of the city, where nobody would think to look for it._

 _Oh, and destroy this message once you've finished reading it._

 _From your friend and former opponent_

 _Mr A_

From somewhere outside, there was a scream and a deafening spate of gunfire – bringing with it a fresh surge of thoughts. And yet, even with the onslaught of mental activity, Gideon could only sigh deeply, quietly tearing up the letter as he did so.

"Here we go again," he grumbled. "The mind is a muscle, huh? Let's hope so, Mr A..."

* * *

A/N: _Coming up next, Fiddleford's game!_


	8. The Toymaker's Tale

A/N: And a new month begins with a new chapter!

Northgalus2002: One thing I will reveal about Mr A is that his access to the prisoners isn't always stable; he operates strictly behind the scenes, well out of the spotlight to avoid getting rumbled by Bill. As such, he's limited as to when he can get a message to the others: he has to wait until Bill starts getting bored and drifts off to think of something new to torture his captives with. Plus, Mr A finds it easier to contact people who are trapped at a fixed address - hence why Pacifica and Gideon were the first to get letters. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't always work... (ominous music, maniacal laughter) hope you enjoy the chapter!

Fantasy Fan 223: Yeah, this is chapter is going to be a pretty miserable experience for Fiddleford. And I hate to say it, Bill hasn't even started yet. I love the guesses on who Mr A really is - I can't confirm any of them yet, alas, but I love your reviews and your speculation! Thanks again!

Kraven The Hunter: I imagine that Arlene Gleeful lost the vacuum cleaner a few hundred miles back; now, it only exists as a mental construct for her to cling to as her anxiety worsens. And as interesting as it would be to turn Gideon into a murderer, he wouldn't exactly be uncomfortable with this new direction to his life, for he's always had a psychopathic streak, after all. In this story, Bill generally wants one of two things for his captives, depending on how amusing or how annoying he finds them: he either wants to drag them down to his level and corrupt them until they're essentially proto-Henchmaniacs, or he just wants to make their lives a living hell. Gideon disappointed him, betrayed him and helped the attempt to overthrow his rule, so Bill isn't interested in making Gideon any worse - just in torturing him to madness. As for what's in store for Fiddleford... well, just wait and see! Thanks for your review.

Guest: I __so__ desperately want to review Mr A's true identity... but I'll have to be patient. For now, all I can say is that I love the speculation - thanks again for reviewing.

Allotrios: Thanks for your review; sadly, you'll have to wait a while for the big reveal, but speculation is always welcome until then!

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter. Feel free to furnish this sad old narcissist of an author with your theories, speculation, tvtropes mentions, recommendations, glowing praise, shrieking confusion, angry questions, lovely long reviews and all manner of critiques and criticism - especially for those typos that creep in so very late at night. Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own __Gravity Falls.__ It's too intangible to be grasped.

* * *

The Rust set in soon after he arrived.

Fiddleford wasn't sure why he called it that; his short-term memories were becoming hazy and ill-defined just by staying here in this mad, indescribable place. But it felt right to call it the Rust, because the more he lost to it, the more it felt like parts of his brain were slowly corroding.

It was a process of __forgetting__ , yes, but it wasn't like the memory gun's instantaneous erasure of unwanted recollections. No, whatever was happening to his mind, it was much slower than the gun and much more unpleasant than even its long-term side-effects: the gun had left him too demented to realize just how much he'd lost until Dipper and Mabel had showed him, but the __Rust__ left him fully aware of the slow decay going on inside his skull.

Fortunately, it didn't appear to be branching out to other parts of his brain: he seemed as sane as ever, his motor skills hadn't deteriorated, and his grasp of logic was perfectly intact. Even his grasp of physics and engineering didn't seem affected. But short-term memories were fading every day, and tiny holes were already starting to appear in long-term recollections: people, places, events, all but the most deeply-ingrained experiences were slowly rusting away into inert thought-stuff.

So, he'd given himself a mantra, a means of refreshing the memories he still possessed, all carefully written down in the notebook he kept strapped to his left leg.

 _ _My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I can still remember who I am.__

The mantra always began the same way – __had__ to begin the same way: the name gave him a starting point, a road to walk, a thread to follow into the echoing corridors of his tired old brain. Without the name, he had nothing to work with, just cobwebs, dust and so many disconnected old thoughts with no frame of reference or context, like scenes from a thousand different unrelated movies hastily collaged together – snapshots from someone else's life. On those terrible mornings when he found himself awaking breathless from nightmares and clawing at the walls in a desperate attempt to get a grip on reality, he needed to remember his name first and foremost, because otherwise his mind was nothing but panic and emptiness.

And he had to remind himself that he could still remember, because __he could__ : he hadn't erased his memories this time; he wasn't suffering the effects of the memory gun. He'd recovered, rehabilitated himself, __remembered__ himself no matter how painful it had been to finally recall who he'd been and what he'd lost. Whatever had happened to him this time was something that hadn't been caused by his most disastrous invention, something much different by far. So, he'd reasoned again and again, it should be easy to remember who he was if he applied the right methods. Unfortunately, it wasn't so easy for Fiddleford to believe anymore, which was probably why he'd made the mantra so insistent in that regard.

Once he'd convinced himself that he could still remember who he was, the rest was easy as pie.

 _ _I am a scientist,__ the mantra continued. _ _I live in Gravity Falls, and I will probably be moving out of the junkyard soon. I have a son named Tate, and I will not rest until I make amends with him. I have friends, and Ford Pines is one of them, and I have forgiven him for what happened all those years ago even if he hasn't forgiven himself – even if he'll never admit to never having forgiven himself. I was afraid of Bill Cipher before, and will not give him the satisfaction of fearing him this time. I will not forget, because I do not__ choose __to forget: I willingly forgot last time and it cost me everything; I will remember because Ford needs me, because Dipper and Mabel need me, because Stan needs me, because__ the world __needs me, because I am more than just a crazy old man in a junkyard, because there are things in my life worth remembering and I will never lose sight of that fact ever again.__

The mantra was to be said every morning the moment he awoke, and every evening before he went to bed, every moment he was overwhelmed by anxiety… and every moment he felt another piece of himself slipping away. He had to keep the memories fresh and clear in his mind, otherwise they would be lost forever; and if he lost enough… well, he might not end up as crazy Old Man McGucket again, but being reduced to a blank slate of a human being wouldn't be much better.

So he'd keep reciting the mantra as long as he could and keep writing as much down as possible, keeping the memories white-hot inside his skull while he went about the usual duties of eating, sleeping, defending and surviving. He'd keep remembering until…

… Until…

…until he was rescued?

 _ _Not much chance of that, hillbilly boy. Nobody knows where you are 'cept for Bill, and he ain't gonna set you free now, not after what you and the others did. And besides, there's nobody left who__ can __rescue you: this place is out of their reach. Nobody can see you through those windows out there, and nobody can find a way in. You're alone again and there's no way outta the junkyard this time. You're gonna forget everything that ever mattered – again – and you're gonna be Bill's plaything until you shrivel up like a slug in a saltshaker, of course.__

Every time the hateful voice of his own doubt spoke up, Fiddleford had to spend at least ten minutes forcing the unpleasant train of thought out of his mind. He couldn't afford to think like this; he couldn't afford to be negative, not with his position so terribly precarious. He needed to be strong, he needed to believe that someone would find him sooner or later. After all, there'd been people in this stretch of the World Gone Weird before, people close enough to be seen through the windows. True, they hadn't stayed long enough to find him or even hear his voice, but surely there'd be someone who'd eventually blunder into his isolated little prison and rescue him. There'd have to be, or else more unfortunate ellipses would occur and Fiddleford would go insane imagining everything that could possibly go wrong.

And that was why the mantra was so terribly necessary – not just to keep his memories from decaying, but to force him to believe that he __could__ remember.

So it began again:

 _ _My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I can still remember who I am.__

* * *

How had he gotten here again?

The point where short-term memory met long-term memory was becoming more and more indistinct as time went on: the time before Bill's ultimate victory was still somewhat intact, missing only a few troubling pieces, but the time after – right down to the last few hours of his stay in this strange new world – was infuriatingly vague.

He remembered that he'd been restored to human form, yes; the fact that he was no longer a tapestry was proof of that much. But there was a gap in his memories between then and his arrival in the wastelands, a gap that could have measured anywhere from an hour to a week: he'd presumably spent much of that time in the Fearamid, but he couldn't remember what had happened in that interval – a fact that Fiddleford was immensely thankful for; even now, with things slowly unravelling inside his head, he still remembered the electrical burns on Ford's neck. And then… Bill had told him something. Something important, something angry, something venomous – what was it about? Oh yes, revenge.

Annoyingly enough, Fiddleford couldn't remember what Bill was taking revenge __for__ or how – not entirely, at any rate: he could easily guess that the ongoing loss of his memories was part of Bill's revenge, but he had the most uncanny feeling that this was only the beginning, that the insane triangle had something far worse planned for him at some point in the future, something probably involving agonizing pain and eternal torment if pattern recognition was any evidence. Bill had __told__ him what it was; Fiddleford could still hear his demented laughter echoing from on high as he gloatingly explained the awful fate that was in store… but he couldn't remember the words.

One way or the other, once he'd finished explaining himself to him, Bill had opened Fiddleford's skull – not something he'd easily forget – tweaked around with a few pieces of neural tissue, stirred his cerebral cortex with a teaspoon, spat in his frontal lobes, closed up the skull and promptly kicked him out of the Fearamid.

He'd awoken… here. Wherever "here" was. This could have been anywhere in the days before Weirdmageddon; for all he knew, this might very well have once been Gravity Falls before Bill had started turning the planet into a cartographer's nightmare.

His new home – if he could call it that – was a vast cavern of gargantuan machinery and labyrinthine gantries, a veritable metropolis of gleaming metal and greasy concrete floors; disused conveyer belts, blast furnaces, engines, automated assembly lines, smelters, foundries, refineries, generators, and all manner of manufacturing equipment stretched as far the eye could see in every direction. It was eventually revealed in a somewhat roundabout fashion that, with the entire world now open to him, Bill had been gathering up just about every single industrial facility on the planet and fusing them together into one colossal manufactory large enough to form its own independent landmass. Fiddleford hadn't seen all of it yet, but he'd explored the complex for about twelve days straight before finally giving up and making his way back to his starting point, where he'd gotten started on attempts to find __a)__ supplies, bedding and other necessities, and __b)__ a means of escape.

Fortunately, Bill hadn't removed the offices or staffrooms from any of the buildings before merging them, so there were at least some creature comforts left around the place. In fact, by his usual standards, this strange manufactory was nothing short of palatial: raiding the staffrooms for soft couches, cushions and curtains gave him a relatively functional bed; the instruction manuals and the few dog-eared paperbacks he was able to scavenge from employee lockers swung wildly from "interesting" to "crushingly dull" but they at least kept him occupied; the bathrooms were all in order and stocked with all the toilet paper he could possibly need; and foraging from breakroom fridges and staff canteens set him up with enough food to sustain him for the next few months.

 _ _Only trouble is, that food's gonna start rotting sooner or later, and not even the stuff in the fridges will keep forever. And how long's the running water gonna last with Bill in charge?__

Escape was not possible, unfortunately: just about every single exit in every single one of the merged buildings had been locked, welded shut, and in extreme cases, walled off. The windows were heavily barred, and even if he could find a way of unscrewing the fixtures that kept the bars in place, the windowpanes were quite clearly shatterproof – as Fiddleford discovered after lobbing a brick at one of them, almost throwing his back out in the process. In fact, the only point that might offer some kind of escape was a tiny skylight set in the roof of the largest of all the merged buildings. Unfortunately, it was simply too high to reach even with the aid of a ladder.

In fact, from the looks of things, the only way he could possibly reach the skylight was if someone happened to lower a rope through it. And who would think to look for him here, wherever here was? More to the point, he had the feeling that the windows were like two-way mirrors: every now and again, he thought he saw human figures outside the skylight, but none of them had ever seen him no matter how hard he tried to get their attention. Or perhaps the building itself was invisible, and the passers-by didn't even know there was a window nearby. Or maybe this was all just conjecture and nobody gave enough of a damn to investigate places like this. One way or another, the windows were out for the time being.

Unfortunately, the initial exploration of this place was the last truly unaffected point in Fiddleford's memory, and that was only because the complex was visible on a consistent basis. Everything else began slipping through his fingers – unless he kept it written down, of course.

Once he'd settled in, the Rust had begun gnawing holes in his mind and within perhaps a day or more, he'd forgotten his supply count, forgotten what Bill had told him, what Bill had done to him, what it was like to go from tapestry to human, and the details of his journey to this industrial hellhole. Needless to say, he'd learned not to stray from his position without mapping out his route. On the upside, at least he hadn't lost enough of his short-term memory to forget where he was.

But how long would __that__ last?

By the time he'd noticed the Rust, he'd forgotten how long he'd been in the facility; before then, he'd assumed keeping a count of days hadn't been important, and now he cursed himself for it: for all he knew, he was already eating tainted food and contaminated water, and all because he hadn't bothered to keep track of when he'd retrieved them. He'd forgotten the exact quantity of food he'd gathered from the staffrooms, and he'd forgotten if there was any more to replace it once his current stock ran dry… and he'd forgotten if there were any hazards out there among the machines, if anything was broken, leaking, short-circuited, on fire or liable to explode at a moment's notice.

And he'd forgotten if he'd had a plan to deal with this situation. Maybe he'd had something better in mind than just waiting to be rescued, but he'd never know now because __he hadn't written the goddamn thing down when he'd had the chance!__

So now, he wrote everything down.

All the facts he desperately needed to know, from directions to supply lists, he added them to the notebook alongside his mantra. As for all the things he didn't need to know immediately or hadn't forgotten just yet, they ended up on the bulletin board of the staffroom that now served as his bedroom. Admittedly, the bulletin board had proved too small for the facts he'd needed to memorize, so he'd brought in a whiteboard from one of conference rooms and wrote them down on that… and when that finally ran out of room, he resorted to taping his notes to the wall, at first only ten, then twenty, then forty, then eighty, until an entire wall of the staffroom was covered in tiny scraps of notepaper – plus, a small tally of days scrawled into the brickwork (true, it didn't contain all the days he'd failed to record prior to his note-taking frenzy, but it helped to keep time in perspective – after all, he'd logged a grand total of two weeks in here by now).

On these walls were all the details of his life he needed to keep alive in his brain: names, addresses, dates, experiences; profiles of his friends, of Dipper and Mabel, of Ford and Stan; dossiers of those who wanted to do him harm – Bill, Pyronica, 8-Ball, Keyhole, Teeth, Lava Lamp; the proudest moments of his life, from his earliest engineering triumphs to the creation of the Shacktron; the greatest mistakes and follies he'd committed – his absence from Tate's life in his younger days, his failure to save Ford from himself, his terror-stricken flight from the project, the creation of the memory gun, the Society of the Blind Eye, and his descent into madness. His entire life story was here, just waiting to be read; if Fiddleford's memories grew hazy when he was here in the staffroom, all he'd need to do was sit down and let the details overwhelm him, and everything would be alright.

If he was out in the facility and looking for escape again, he had his notebook – and the mantra.

 _ _My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I can still remember who I am.__

* * *

By day fifteen (possibly), he was sure his method was working. After all, he was keeping everything fresh and sharp in his mind, at least as sharp as his rusty old short-term memory could allow: if he needed to remember something urgent, he'd just look down at his notebook; if he needed something more integral, he'd go back to the staffroom, have a seat and look over his great big wall of memories.

With things the way they were, all he had to do was keep the memories fresh and wait for rescue.

Immediately, upon letting the thought cross his mind, he knew he'd just made a terrible mistake: no matter what the situation, everything always, __always__ went wrong when he was feeling perfectly confident. Every moment when Fiddleford had set aside his reservations with Ford's project ended with something blowing up in his face. And after that, he'd been __so certain__ that the memory gun would solve all his problems, and that the Society of the Blind Eye would be there to help Gravity Falls.

Well, if "problems" meant little things like sanity, self-respect and family, and "help" meant vigorous brain-rape, technically he was right – but only technically.

And what about the Robot Pterodactyl, the Shame-Bot, the Gobblewonker, the __Death Ray?__ In his madness, he'd thought they couldn't fail either. And the Shack-Tron, the cornerstone of their plan to rescue Ford and stop Bill? He'd thought it was a guaranteed win – __everyone__ had! But lo and behold, the plan had all gone to hell and ended with him stranded in this oil-streaked maggot heap with his memories turning to rust, and all because he'd been stupid enough to think that everything would work out in the end.

This time, it happened just after lunch: he saw someone through the factory windows, someone walking along the crater-studded pathway just outside the manufactory, close enough to see him standing there if only this particular someone would just __turn around.__

Whoever this passer-by was, Fiddleford didn't recognize him, but he had a good view of his face: he was a kid, perhaps twelve to thirteen years old, short and skinny for his age, probably even skinnier than his pre-Weirdmageddon days if those ill-fitting clothes were any evidence. His face was pallid and narrow from malnourishment, his brown hair matted with dirt and sweat, his button nose streaked with blood, and despite the bruises around his eyes there was no mistaking the fear in his expression. However, even though he knew for a fact that he didn't recognize this kid, Fiddleford felt he __should__ ; something about the blue-and-white cap he wore, with its pine tree insignia, seemed almost improbably familiar to him.

But as Fiddleford watched, another figure unexpectedly staggered up from the dusty path across from the visitor and almost collapsed into the scrawny kid's arms – prompting an immediate shriek of " _ _Pacifica!__ " from the boy, loud enough to be heard even through the thick glass.

Peering closer, he saw that the newcomer, this __Pacifica,__ was a girl perhaps the same age as the boy she'd just stumbled into, immediately distinguished by the impressive length of blonde hair she sported. Slender, aristocratic in bearing and almost regal despite her current state of disarray, she was dressed in a potato sack and the tattered remains of a home-made sweater. Judging by the state of her feet, she'd been walking for quite a while – hence why she'd collapsed.

For a moment, the boy with the cap helped Pacifica stay upright, murmuring inaudible somethings as he did so. After that, they talked for a time, the boy seemingly asking questions, and the girl answering them in what could only be a state of growing panic; even from this distance, there was no mistaking the look on the blonde's face. And then, quite abruptly, Pacifica started to cry, at first hiding her face behind her hair to disguise the tears but eventually breaking down in undignified sobs. Alarmed, the boy reached out to touch her, hesitantly at first, as if not entirely sure how to begin; then, he very gently hugged her, holding the girl in his arms until her crying slowly ground to a halt.

To the boy's obvious surprise, Pacifica then kissed him; clearly, he didn't object though, for the kid immediately broke out in the dopey "did-that-really-just-happen" grin of the suddenly and unexpectedly head-over-heels.

And then Pacifica's eyes turned purple.

A split-second later, she wasn't Pacifica anymore: suddenly, she was eight feet tall, her skull distended by a massive set of curving horns, her eyes fused into one single, deranged orb, her skin a vivid neon pink, her limbs wreathed in searing white flames. Even with his mind being eaten away by the Rust, Fiddleford didn't forget one of Bill's Henchmaniacs so easily.

Pyronica allowed the boy a moment to savour the shock and the fear, before pouncing on him. Whatever she wanted, it was over in five seconds flat; Fiddleford didn't see most of it from his angle and Pyronica's cape blocked the view, but he could see that the Henchmaniac had a knife in her hand and she was obviously angling it to cut something off – something around forehead level.

Moments later, Pyronica stepped away, clutching a bloody flap of skin in her hand: she'd flayed the kid's head from the bridge of his nose to the crown of his skull, leaving his face soaked in blood. Gleefully, she waved the tattered remnants of the boy's forehead in his face, before vanishing just as quickly as she'd appeared, leaving her unfortunate victim lying prone in the dirt, bleeding heavily. But then, to Fiddleford's surprise, the boy got to his feet – teary-eyed and shivering with pain, but somehow still soldiering on.

And then the boy __changed.__ He took one step and his entire body warped and shifted, his flesh turning green and swiftly dissolving into a mass of vines that rolled along the road for several feet, before finally resolving themselves back into a human figure. Suddenly back to normal, the boy turned in the general direction of Heaven and screamed something profane at the distant shape of the Fearamid. His head wound was gone, but the trauma clearly lingered. Eventually, the boy hobbled on – and transformed again, this time into a red-and-white striped beach ball, which promptly ricocheted down the road for several feet before returning to human form. On and on he went, walking and transforming and transforming and walking – until he was finally out of sight.

And it wasn't until Fiddleford had gotten back to his wall of notes and studied the descriptions of his friends that he finally realized the truth:

The kid he'd just seen being mutilated was Dipper Pines. Not only had Fiddleford gotten within ten feet of being rescued, but he'd just watched a friend and ally being tortured – and he hadn't been able to do a damn thing.

In the end, he was so overwhelmed by the realization of his own helplessness that he could only collapse in a corner, furiously muttering his mantra in a desperate attempt to curtail any further weakness on his part –as if a mantra would be enough. But it had to be, or what was the point in continuing?

 _ _My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I can still remember who I am.__

* * *

Sixteen days into his imprisonment, something very unusual happened. Or at least, he was reasonably sure it was unusual: after all, he'd made dozens of notes on his own physical condition just in case he was hurt or sick at any point, and none of them mentioned __this.__

While walking along one of the many gantries and trying not to look down at the yawning abyss of merged factories floors just a few hundred feet below him, he happened to rest his hand on the railing for a moment – and when he next moved, __the railing moved with him__. Long since corroded beyond repair, the handrail snapped off at the stem and suddenly Fiddleford found himself with a length of solid steel attached to his left hand.

Looking closer, he discovered that the railing had somehow been absorbed by his flesh, somehow permeating his hand without leaving a single wound. More disturbingly, though he could easily force the metal deeper into his skin, he couldn't remove it – for it wasn't embedded in him, but fused and merged with his being. Eventually, he'd pushed the rail all the way into his arm, were it was swiftly assimilated: beneath the flesh of the afflicted limb, unnatural shapes oozed and shifted as the steel was slowly incorporated into his bone structure, and wirelike growths of metal wound their way across the skin of his arms like tiny silvery veins.

Somehow, Fiddleford had gained the power to alter his physiology, his body responding to the presence of metal and incorporating it into its structure. And as disturbing as the experience was, the ad hoc augmentations had made his arm far stronger and far more resilient than before: the muscles no longer ached and throbbed every time he climbed the ladder to the fourth floor, his grip on the rungs no longer threatened to slip, and even the arthritic pain in his knuckles had faded.

For a time, he feared that this was some new trick being played on him by Bill, that any minute the metal he'd assimilated would suddenly tear his bones apart from the inside. But as the day wore on and no negative side effects resulted from his self-modification, curiosity won out over fear, and Fiddleford began to investigate the particulars of his new state of being; after all, perhaps this was something he could use to escape if he used it correctly.

So, he experimented: descending to the factory floor, he scavenged for any loose pieces of metal, gathering up spools of copper wire, steel ball-bearings, titanium rods, car batteries, iron ingots, even empty soda cans. Then, once he'd found a room bright enough to serve as an impromptu operating theatre, he went about slowly incorporating the metal into the flesh of his left arm. It took several hours, but eventually his arm was successfully augmented, and felt stronger than ever before: within minutes of his alterations, almost all the old aches and pains in that particular limb were gone, and he was strong enough easily shift the toppled-over filing cabinets upright. Along the way, he found that the process only worked if he was concentrating hard on the metal itself, which at least prevented him from accidentally merging with things he didn't want to absorb.

Enraptured, Fiddleford decided to try augmenting other parts of his body. However, as he considered the idea, he realized that his previous approach – vacuuming up whatever metal he thought would work and letting his body do the rest – might not be the most efficient. Perhaps there were other methods of alteration – methods that might finally put his skills as an inventor to good use.

Back in the days before he'd recovered his sanity, back when he was just Old Man McGucket, the idea of cyborg prosthetics had briefly fascinated him: after all, he was getting old, and after god only knew how many years spent living rough in a junkyard, his health wasn't always in a cooperative mood. For a time, he'd toyed with the notion of improving himself through mechanical organs, imagining himself equipped with piston-powered limbs and electronic eyes, his stomach replaced with a furnace, his heart a clockwork engine that never ran down. But at some point, some dregs of sanity had reached his brain just long enough for him to realize the logical problem: replacing these organs meant __removing__ them, and performing self-surgery with no anaesthetic in a non-sterile junkyard was a bit too much of a risk, even for him. So he'd put the idea to one side and got started on the Gobblewonker.

But now that his condition allowed him to assimilate metal without shedding blood or risking infection, perhaps Fiddleford could try the idea for real; maybe, if he built a prosthetic detailed and imposing enough, it wouldn't be absorbed by his arm – but vice-versa.

It took five hours to design a functional prosthetic limb and two more to scour the manufactory for the parts he needed to make it. Fortunately, many of the facilities that comprised this place still had tons and tons of raw materials left around, along with the equipment needed to make it work: the controls to the machines were all there, and the power was still on. All Fiddleford needed to do was find it and set to work. Needless to say, it was a long, arduous process spent running back and forth between various banks of machinery: forging the metal components, readying the wires, cooling the metal, assembling the motors and joints, testing the electrical systems and hoping that the solar panels would be enough to fuel it.

Eventually, his newest masterpiece was ready: a gleaming prosthetic limb, a skeletal arm of servos and gears carefully layered with armour-plates of chrome and steel; testing confirmed that its mechanisms were sturdy enough punch through a concrete wall, but delicate enough to balance an egg on the index finger (just as well, really – it was the last egg in the entire building).

And when he placed the prosthetic over his right arm, the assimilation process was different: just as Fiddleford had suspected, instead of incorporating the armour and mechanisms into his flesh, it incorporated his flesh into the prosthetic. His nervous system merged instantly with the circuitry, muscles interfacing perfectly with the servomotors and pistons – even his blood seemed to fuel it as readily as the little solar panel. True, the new arm didn't have much in the way of skin on the surface, but that wasn't worth worrying about, truth be told: as long as the mechanism was functional, he needn't care.

By that time, sunset was already creeping through the manufactory windows, and so Fiddleford scaled the gantry and strode back along the catwalk like a conquering hero, one arm supported by alloy-plated bones and striated with veins of incorporated metals, the other a magnificent steel-plated appendage that wouldn't have looked out of place on a medieval suit of armour. Maybe with these augmentations and more, he might have the power to break free of the manufactory: if these arms were as strong as he believed, maybe it would be simple enough just to do away with the skylight entirely and just punch his way out through the wall… and if he could keep his notes with him, enough to keep his memories intact and his mission firmly in place, maybe he could then try to find some way of stopping Bill for good.

And it was that point, just as he was at his most confident, that everything quite naturally went horribly wrong.

Perhaps half a mile away from the staffroom, a hollow __whoosh__ split the silence of the manufactory, and Fiddleford caught the distinctive smell of smoke from somewhere up ahead. Then, something exploded – not one of the machines down on the factory floor, thank god, but something up in the office. Something was definitely ablaze, though, and the only consolation was that it didn't have the harsh, chemical stink of more dangerous fires; no, this one had the more commonplace aroma of…

…burning paper…

"Dadgum hornswogglin' salt-lickin' flour-flushin' consarn…"

Fiddleford __flung__ himself along the catwalk at a breakneck pace, cursing himself for straying so far from his encampment without double-checking the area for fire hazards, muttering a long chain of hillbilly expletives as he ran. By the time he'd left the gantry and vaulted into the carpeted office area, he was also kicking himself for not augmenting his legs as well, for his knees were just about ready to snap in two. But finally, he reached the end of the final hallway, rounded the corner and skidded to a halt right in front of the staff room door.

Inside, the room was ablaze from floor to ceiling, the carpet a rolling inferno, the meagre office artworks swiftly charring beyond recognition, the furniture little more than blazing husks, the potted plants all but gone.

And at the centre of it all, Fiddleford's notes – the memories he'd been so desperate to put to paper – _**_**were on fire.**_**_

It took him fifteen minutes to find a working fire extinguisher, and by then his notes had been reduced to ashes, the whiteboard had been melted to slag, and the room was beyond saving. By the time he'd finally smothered the flames, Fiddleford was just about ready to cry; perhaps he already was crying, though that might have just been his eyes watering from all the smoke.

Then, just as he was starting to wonder what could have caused this, he noticed a sheet of yellow paper nailed to the staffroom door, just out of reach of the flames. By that stage, he could already tell it was a letter from Bill, but he picked it up and started reading anyway.

 _ _HIYA, FIDS!__ the message blared in angry, jagged capital letters.

 _ _LOVE WHAT YOU'VE DONE WITH THE PLACE! THOUGHT I'D REDECORATE WHILE YOU WERE OUT – HOPE YOU DON'T MIND!__

 _ _BY THE WAY, I'M BETTING YOU LIKE ALL THAT METAL IN YOUR BODY! YOU SHOULD, I WENT TO A LOT OF TROUBLE JUST TO MAKE YOUR FLESH ASSIMILATE METAL ON TOUCH. TRUE, IT'S BEEN A LOT SUBTLER UP UNTIL TODAY. BY NOW, YOU'VE DISPLACED MORE THAN HALF YOUR BRAIN TISSUE JUST BY WALKING AROUND BAREFOOT.__

 _ _OH COME ON, WHAT DID YOU__ _ ** _ **THINK**_**_ _ _WAS CAUSING THE MEMORY LOSS THIS TIME?__

 _ _ALL I HAD TO DO WAS PLAY AROUND WITH YOUR FLESH FOR A BIT, MAKE SURE YOUR NOODLE WENT FIRST, AND KEEP YOUR MEMORIES FROM CARRYING OVER TO THE NEW FORMAT. YOU DID THE REST – AGAIN. DON'T WORRY: YOU'LL KEEP YOUR ENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE, AND YOU'LL BE ABLE TO FORM PROPER MEMORIES AND RETAIN THEM ONCE THIS IS ALL OVER AND DONE WITH – YOU JUST WON'T BE ABLE TO REMEMBER THE LIFE OF FIDDLEFORD MCGUCKET. THAT'S NOT SO BAD, IS IT? IT'S NOT AS IF YOU ACCOMPLISHED ANYTHING OF LASTING VALUE, AND BESIDES, YOU'LL BE SO MUCH MORE FUN TO PLAY WITH ONCE YOUR BRAIN'S COMPLETELY CONVERTED TO METAL.__

 _ _I THINK I'LL MAKE YOU MY NEW TOYMAKER! AFTER ALL, YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WITH THE TALENT AND THE TASTE FOR MAKING MECHANICAL MONSTERS, AND I NEED FRONTLINE TROOPS – SOMETHING BIG AND SCARY TO GET THE NEW SUBJECTS PROPERLY FREAKED OUT BEFORE THEY MEET THE REAL DEAL! I'VE EVEN GOT A COOL NEW TITLE FOR YOU. BELIEVE ME, YOU'LL LIKE IT – ONCE YOU'VE FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING ELSE, OF COURSE.__

 _ _NOW, YOU MIGHT BE ASKING ME, "BILL, WHY ARE YOU BEING SO SADISTIC? WHY TORTURE ME LIKE THIS?" AND I'D USUALLY SAY "WHY NOT?" BUT I'M IN A GIVING MOOD, AND BESIDES IT'S NOT AS IF YOU'LL REMEMBER THIS FOR LONG. SO HERE'S THE REASON FOR THE RUST: YOU SPOILED MY FUN. THIRTY YEARS AGO, FORDSIE WAS MY FAVOURITE PAWN: SMART, OPEN-MINDED, NAÏVE, AND SO MUCH FUN TO PLAY WITH, ESPECIALLY AFTER ALL THOSE DECADES I SPENT DEALING WITH THOSE DIMWITTED NORTHWESTS. YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE THE THINGS I MADE OL' SIXER DO TO HIMSELF WHEN HE WAS POSSESSED – OR ASLEEP! – AND I HAD HIM HOOKED SO WELL, HE COULDN'T EVEN BRING HIMSELF TO SUSPECT ME. YOU'VE NO IDEA JUST HOW CUTE IT WAS, WATCHING HIM TRY TO JUSTIFY WHAT I'D DONE TO HIM, WATCHING HIM TYING HIMSELF IN KNOTS TO AVOID ACCUSING HIS MUSE AND PARTNER.__

 _ _BUT THEN YOU BLUNDERED IN AND YOU SNAPPED HIM OUT OF IT – YOU MADE HIM BREAK THE DEAL. YOU SPOILED MY FUN, TOOK MY FAVOURITE TOY AWAY FROM ME AND GOT THE PORTAL SHUT DOWN FOR THE NEXT THREE DECADES. AND AS IF THAT WASN'T BAD ENOUGH, YOU WENT ON TO BUILD THE MEMORY GUN – THE SAME MEMORY GUN THAT FORDSIE AND STAN TRIED TO KILL ME WITH.__

 _ _SO I'M TAKING EVERYTHING FROM YOU – WHAT LITTLE YOU HAD ANYWAY: YOUR MEMORIES, YOUR FAMILY, YOUR FRIENDS, AND YOUR HUMANITY.__

 _ _DON'T STRUGGLE. JUST LIE BACK AND LET IT HAPPEN. YOU MIGHT EVEN ENJOY IT.__

 _ _LOVE, BILL.__

And then the paper, was gone, vanished into flame with a flicker of magical energy.

Somewhere back in what passed for reality, Fiddleford sat down heavily amidst the ruins of his tiny encampment, and struggled valiantly not to lose all composure.

 _ _I've still got my notebook,__ he told himself. __I've still got the mantra.__

 _ _My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I can still remember who I am.__

* * *

In the days that followed the burning of his notes, the Rust accelerated dramatically.

Now that he knew that his newfound affinity for metal was causing his memory loss, Fiddleford tried to avoid touching anything metallic at any and all costs, but it was futile: even when he went to the trouble of stealing a pair of shoes from someone's locker, miniscule tendrils of metal kept reaching up from the gantries and pouring themselves into his veins. Even in the carpeted areas of the office weren't safe: from beneath the carpet, wires and cables snaked out of the floorboards to assault him, stabbing at his feet like tiny scorpions. With every step he took, the more his brain turned to metal; with every move he made, his memories got a little fainter.

He tried to record his memories again, god knew he tried, but the process of making the first set of notes had depleted the paper supplies at this end of the office, and by the time he'd found a new staffroom to call home and enough paper to write everything down, everything he wanted to record was spiralling around the plughole.

He couldn't remember where he was born, he couldn't remember where he'd grown up, he couldn't remember the names of his parents, his childhood friends, the schools where he'd been taught, and even the details of his first proper experiment were gone. He remembered Gravity Falls, yes, and Dipper and Mabel and so many others, but only because they were mentioned in the second half of the mantra – __and he couldn't remember what they looked like!__ He could barely remember how they met!

He couldn't remember what Tate looked like anymore; he couldn't remember his own son's face!

And Ford…

He remembered the portal, yes, and he remembered getting briefly dragged into it, and he even remembered the last argument he'd had with Ford about it. With effort, he even remembered how he __felt__ about Ford – the sense of lost friendship, the crushing despair, the wish that he could make Ford see what Bill was doing to him, the regret at erasing the memories of their time together – and later, the sense of joy he'd felt at seeing him alive and well again, of being able to reconcile with him at long last. He remembered all the emotions and impressions and complicated thoughts…

But he couldn't remember Ford's face.

Bit by bit, the memories went: he couldn't remember when he'd started getting his memories back or how; he couldn't remember what he was doing in the time after he'd left Ford and the time before he'd gotten his memories back. He couldn't remember what Tate had been like when he was younger: all the happy memories of his son's childhood were gone, replaced with emptiness and a few hazy recollections of the now-adult Tate's embarrassment. He couldn't remember his wife – her face, her name, what he'd loved about her, all of it was nothing more than void inside his skull now. Everything was going, bit by bit, piece by piece – often while he tried to write it down.

In the end, he was left with only three pages of concrete memory he could add to his notebook. He'd __have__ to add it to his notebook, because now he knew he couldn't afford to put it up on a wall – not when Bill could just set fire to it.

 _ _But what makes you think he won't set fire to this?__ He asked himself. __What makes you think he'll play fair with your notebook?__

 _ _Maybe. Can't remember if he played fair with anyone.__

One way or another, the days always ended the same way – with Fiddleford huddled in a corner of his newest encampment, frantically reviewing his notebook in a desperate attempt to keep his memory – what little remained of it – fresh in his transmuting brain.

 _ _My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket,__ he told himself. __Fiddleford Hadron McGucket.__

He didn't bother adding __"and I can still remember who I am."__ After all, what would be the point in lying to himself?

* * *

Bill gave him another week alone with his decomposing memories before the inevitable finally happened.

One morning, he awoke to the smell of burning paper flooding the air once again, and opened his eyes to find the notebook hovering five feet above the ground, merrily burning to cinders.

And by the time he reached it, everything that remained of his recorded memories had been well and truly incinerated.

This time, he couldn't bring himself to panic. He couldn't even find himself to be sad about losing everything, now that the Rust had almost run its course.

After all, had rebelling against Bill done him any good at all?

Had resisting the Rust done him any good?

Had anything he'd ever done in his entire life been of any lasting value?

He could barely remember the answers to these questions anymore: what was the point in trying? Maybe it would be better if he just let go. Maybe it would be better if he admitted defeat, let Bill do whatever he wanted with him, abandoned hope once and for all. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad: maybe he really would be able to form new memories once this was over and done with. Maybe, if he just went back to sleep, this whole nightmare would be over when he finally awoke.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a few lingering embers of hope sparked feebly, insisting that he at least try to keep the mantra alive. Perhaps too tired to ignore the impulse, perhaps consumed by nostalgia for a past he could barely remember anymore, he racked his brains for the mantra, just so he could repeat it one last time.

 _ _My name is…__

 _ _My name…__

 _ _My name__ was…

He sighed.

"Aw banjo polish," he muttered disconsolately.

* * *

The Ruinous Toymaker blinked, all eight of his eyes whirring faintly as their shutters opened and closed in cyborg bemusement.

 _ _A letter?__

Most of the time, if Bill wanted something done, he'd just materialize in the Toymaker's office and issue his edicts directly – or if he was busy playing with his favoured playthings or planning the spread of Weirdness to the next star system in line, he'd send one of the Henchmaniacs in his stead. Correspondence was unheard of. After all, there was to be no paperwork in the forge, only relentless construction, augmentation, and animation: Bill wanted biomechanical monstrosities to toy with alongside his organic captives, clockwork soldiers to herd fresh victims into the path of the __real__ nightmares, and most of all, he wanted to see if a human intellect could ever create abominations equal to those Bill could conjure with a single thought.

So why would he bother sending letters to the Forge? Who could have simply made this grubby little envelop materialize in his office?

 _ _Probably Kryptos. Maybe Hectorgon. After all, this wouldn't be the first time those two teamed up for a letterbomb gig.__

By all rights, the Toymaker should have just thrown the offending article away and scuttled back out of his office as quickly as his numerous legs could carry him. He had work to do, after all: he had new parts to manufacture, new monsters to build, and at least twelve screaming amputees to outfit with cybernetic limbs. He couldn't afford to take breaks, not when there were so many wondrous constructions to be complete, and certainly not with Bill demanding constant updates.

And yet, something in the back of his mind – amidst all the fibre-optic cables and titanium plating – stirred at the sight of the wax-sealed envelope on his desk, something that seemed to call to the Toymaker's past.

This impulse made no sense to the Toymaker: he had no distant past; he had no past at all, in fact. He hadn't even existed until Bill had given him life and form, and given him a purpose here at the Forge. What was the point in ruminating on days gone by when he'd barely lived through seven of them in total?

But in the end, curiosity won out over logic: extending a pincer from the palm of his right hand, he plucked the envelope from the desk and slit it open with a knife-tipped fingernail. Finding nothing hazardous inside, he held out an official-looking communique, complete with elaborate letterheads and insignia – though most of them had been rendered hazy and indistinct through exposure to wind and rain. He felt like he should recognize these blurry symbols, but he couldn't account for exactly why.

The message read as followed:

 _ _Dear Fiddleford__

 _ _You don't know me, and yet you do; you've seen me several times before in Gravity Falls, and yet you've never seen or heard me before today. If this sounds like I'm talking in riddles, it's because I am: Bill is always watching, as I'm sure you know by now, and I can't afford to have him learn too much about me. I know you have no reason to trust this letter after the one you received from Bill, but please believe me when I say that I want to help you.__

 _ _Unfortunately, that's proving a bit difficult at the moment: Bill's altered the atomic structure of this factory-forge he's imprisoned you in, distanced it from the usual loopholes I can provide aid from: only Henchmanacs can get in and out without Bill's permission. I can help you, but it's going to take a long time for me to get all the pieces in position: one of the others – like Mabel or Stanford – might be able to free you, but Bill's keeping too close an eye on them for me to engineer their escape right now. Until everything's in position, you need to keep remembering. I know it won't be easy, but please try to hang on to what remain of your memories and don't lose hope. Help is on the way.__

 _ _From your friend and ally, Mr A__

For a moment, the Ruinous Toymaker regarded the letter with confusion: names like "Fiddleford," "Mabel" and "Stanford" meant nothing to him of course, but for the briefest of instants they __felt__ uncannily familiar, as if he had known their owners once upon a time. For a moment, he even considered investigating further. But just as quickly as it had appeared, the sense of recognition was gone again, and the names were once more as alien to him as anything outside the Forge.

"Huh," he muttered. "Wouldn't want to be this Fiddleford fella, whoever he is."

And with that, the Ruinous Toymaker crumpled the letter into a ball, tossed it down the recycling chute and got back to work.

* * *

 _ _A/N: Coming up next - Robbie's game!__


	9. Shepherds Can't Be Choosers

A/N: I had intended to post this chapter a couple of days ago, ladies and gents, and I can only plead extenuating circumstances - namely dental appointments and pain. Suffice it to say that wisdom teeth are not my friend. I can only beg your indulgence and hope that this chapter is up to standards.

Northgalus2002, thanks for the review - and I hate to add another question, but here's something fun to consider: even if - and only **__**if**__** \- Fiddleford and the others can be saved, will they be able to recover from what Bill did to them?

Kraven The Hunter: yep, Bill's a very "burn them to dust, fuse the dust into glass and shatter it into dust all over again" kind of guy. Suffice it to say that he's also been encouraging Fiddleford's mechanical aptitude into a desire to modify his own body; if anyone ever manages to actually find the manufactory where he's been imprisoned, Fiddleford is going to look distinctly inhuman by the time they catch up with him.

Guest - I'm glad you liked the chapter, and I hope this chapter provides an entertaining and original game for Robbie.

Guest 2 (If you're the same reviewer as the first guest, please forgive me): I love long reviews - thanks so much for your theories and analysis! To answer your question, I know the SCP foundation very well, and I'm familiar with the one you suggested - though I wasn't drawing inspiration from 217 when I decided Fiddleford's game; I was thinking a very weird take on the Absorbing Man if you can believe it. I love your idea for Dipper and Wendy, and while I can't confirm if I'm going in that direction, I can only hope my conclusion lives up to the hype I've had from dedicated reviewers and theorists like you! Thanks so much!

Fantasy Fan 223: Once again, your reviews are a joy to read! In regards to Dipper not seeing Fiddleford, Mr A mentions Bill having cut off the manufactory from the usual loopholes - including tangibility and visibility: in other words, Fiddleford could never be seen through the windows and the skylight was just a cruel joke on Bill's part. As for their powers, Bill feels perfectly confident with giving his enemies these abilities is because he believes that they a) are under his control and b) he can remove them any time he likes it. For good measure, some of these powers have restrictions that mean that they can't be used against him - as you'll soon see. Of course, Mr A hints that they might develop beyond these restrictions; as for if he's correct... well, wait and see. There'll be some more hints as to Mr A's identity in this chapter - feel free to keep guessing! Also, I'm honoured, truly _**_honoured _**_ at the thought of fanart regarding my work: whatever you produce, I'm grateful for it. Thanks again!

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: feel free to furnish me with your lovely long reviews, critiques, criticisms, corrections, theories, tvtropes recommendations, glowing appraisals, searing flames, and opinions of any kind - especially concerning the inevitable typoes. Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: __Gravity Falls__ is not mine, and neither is Dear Hearts and Gentle People. No lyrics are included, but just thought I'd mention it.

* * *

The first thing Robbie noticed was the air-horn blaring down at him from on high, rousing him from what had almost been a sound sleep and pounding mercilessly at his defenceless eardrums with all the crushing force of a steam hammer.

Flailing desperately for a grip on the waking world, he toppled out of bed and landed with a crash on the ice-cold concrete floor; instinctively, he forced one aching eye open, only to immediately shade them against the brutal onslaught of searing white light being poured down on him. It was like staring into a spotlight from less than three feet away. In the end, he could only close his eyes and cover his ears, hoping that the bombardment of noise and light would stop if he just waited long enough. But no sooner had he done so, someone hauled him upright by the scruff of his neck, swiftly wrenching his hands away from his ears and prizing his eyelids open with vicelike fingers, forcing him to finally witness the world around him.

He was no longer in the Fearamid. More to the point, his heart was back in his chest, his ribcage was closed, and the massive incision down his front had healed. Unfortunately, by the looks of things, the improvements hadn't gone very far.

The room he'd awakened in was tiny, a phone booth-sized cubicle just large enough to fit a bed, a toilet, a sink, himself, and the two guards currently holding him upright. On all sides, rough concrete walls and harsh fluorescent lights loomed over him: no windows could be found here, nor were there any decorations of unless you counted the loudspeaker still roaring down at him. The only exit was a heavy steel door, and by the looks of things it couldn't be opened from the inside. On the upside, the guards at either side of him had left it open; on the downside, escape didn't seem possible, for no matter how much Robbie struggled, he couldn't free himself from their grip.

The guards themselves were nothing short of nightmarish, and not just because they were at least three feet taller than he was: their bodies were impossibly thin, with long, spindly pipe-cleaner arms and torsos so sunken they looked more like desiccated apple cores – withered cylinders distinct even under their imposing black-and-gold uniforms. By rights, they shouldn't have been able to hold him still at all with the state of their muscles, but somehow their emaciated frames were strong enough to keep their prisoner almost completely immobile. And worst of all, they were staring right at him, allowing Robbie to see that from the neck upwards the guards were composed almost entirely of eyeball.

They didn't even have faces, just a single bloodshot eye from chin to forehead, slit-pupiled and sickly yellow.

Then, just as quickly as it had begun, the air-horn finally fell silent and the guards finally released Robbie's eyelids. A moment later, a human voice echoed down from the loudspeaker, dull and official-sounding: _"Attention A5 residents: workshift 1 commences in fifteen minutes. The following Shepherds are to report to the assembly enclosures: Madsen, Hammond, James, Lowry, Smith and Valentino. Security are to assist new Shepherds through orientation. All hail Bill Cipher, Master of Earth."_

And with that, the guards frogmarched Robbie out the door and into the most humiliating ten minutes of his entire life: first, they sat him down in front of a mirror and shaved his head, ignoring his every shriek of protest as they crudely sheared away the eye-covering fringe and mowed his scalp bare.

Then, they yanked him out of the barber's chair and proceeded to slice his clothes off with a pair of scissors: as if being undressed in front of two intimidating strangers wasn't bad enough, he then had to watch as his favourite jacket and skinny jeans were unceremoniously tossed into an incinerator, along with his shoes, piercings, wallet and phone – and all he could do was whine __"But I didn't even had a chance to upload my selfies, man!"__

After that, the guards escorted him down the corridor to a shower room, where they kicked him under a deluge of freezing water, shoved him in front of a wind tunnel to dry him off, and then forced him into an unspeakably ugly grey pair of coveralls.

And as if the look wasn't bad enough (what was he supposed to be, a janitor?) the coveralls itched.

A lot.

Ten minutes later, Robbie was dragged out of the warren of corridors bordering his new home and out into the unforgiving grey sunlight of a new reality: he was standing on the edge of a vast plaza large enough to accommodate all of Gravity Falls and probably all the neighbouring towns as well; all of it was brushed concrete tiles and stainless steel fixtures, decorated only with shallow moats of deathly-still water and terrifyingly minimalistic statues – most of them depicting eerily abstract figures staring at the ground, featureless heads bowed in submission.

Above them, massive concrete towers stretched into the sky like grasping fingers, windowless and bare except for the long yellow banners dangling from their uppermost ramparts. Each banner was decorated with a single distinctive symbol – one that Robbie recognized almost immediately.

;(

 _ _The winky frown.__

Tearing his eyes away from the mocking banners, Robbie swiftly realized he and the guards weren't alone: all around him, miserable-looking people bustled to and fro across the plaza, either en route to the nearest building or leaving for the narrow streets. All of them were dressed in similar sets of coveralls, some grey, some green, some brown, some black, and just about all of them wore the same expression of mingled fear and depression. On every street corner, more guards stood on watch, their cyclopean eyes scanning the crowd for any signs of disobedience; more still mingled with the crowd, escorting groups of coveralled workers in and out of buildings.

Eventually, the guards finally brought Robbie to a stop in front of a decent-sized gathering of people standing in the middle of a roped-off enclosure, perhaps fifty to a hundred strong. Unlike the rest of the crowd, however, they were dressed in little more than rags. All wore the same uniformly blank expression, and all of them remained completely still and silent as the guards escorted him towards them; none of them moved, not even when the guards shoved Robbie at one of the nearest congregants. Instinctively, he hastily flung his arms out in front of him to stop himself from toppling forward, accidentally grabbing the blank-faced man by the arm as he did so.

It was then and there that, as he struggled to haul himself upright, that Robbie noticed that the man in front of him did not appear to notice that he was being used as a ladder. He didn't seem surprised or angry or even mildly confused; he just stared straight ahead, his gaze blank and lifeless. His slate-grey skin was ice-cold to the touch, and unless the movies had lied about how to properly take a pulse, Robbie couldn't find a pulse either in the guy's arm or his neck.

But it wasn't until Robbie noticed the distinct absence of breath that he finally realized that the man was, in fact, dead. Anxiously, he checked the man standing next to him: also dead, as was the woman standing beside him, as was the nine-year-old child standing to her right. Everyone in this roped-off enclosure was deader than disco – a zombie gently mouldering in the cold grey sunlight.

At that point, one of the guards slapped Robbie across the back of the head. "What was that for?" he demanded, trying not to sound as whiny as he felt.

By way of an answer, the guard held up a single piece of paper: __get to work,__ it read. __Shepherd reanimated human remains to the power plant, supervise their conversion to necrofuel, and then return here for additional duties. Failure to begin assigned tasks within five minutes will result in corporal punishment. Now get to work.__

"Shepherd?" Robbie echoed. "How am I supposed to shepherd them, man? They aren't even reacting to anything! What the hell am I gonna do?"

The guard turned over the paper in his hands, revealing another block of text: __Command them,__ it read. __Direct with speech, hand gestures, and if necessary, the power of your mind – assuming you have one. You have been empowered to command the dead by the edict of Bill Cipher himself. Make use of this power to dispose of human waste and provide this city with fuel, or you will be punished.__

"But why me? Why was I given this job?"

 _ _Because it's the one job you couldn't screw up, you underachieving assache,__ said the other side of the paper. __Now get these cadavers off to the power plant and stop wasting my time.__

With that, the nearest guard shoved him back in the direction of the zombies. For twelve awkward seconds, Robbie stood in front of the group, hemming and hawing as he tried to figure out what to do next. Then, trying not to sound like an even bigger idiot than he felt in that moment, he gave his first experimental order to the zombies:

"Um… okay, guys. Follow me."

As the zombies shuffled to life, an idea struck Robbie, and he voiced it almost without thinking: "Does anyone know where the power plant is?"

Without missing a beat, the nearest guard reached out and punched Robbie in the ear.

As Robbie staggered backwards, clutching the side of his head in agony, the other guard grabbed him by the collar and pointed in the direction of a building somewhere in the distance: it took a little while for Robbie's smarting eyes to focus on it, but eventually he saw that it was a gigantic dome-shaped structure bordered on all sides by colossal industrial chimneys, all of which were continuously belching long plumes of smog into the stark-grey sky.

"Oh," Robbie groaned. "Okay then. Come on, guys, let's get moving."

* * *

It took over an hour for him to escort the zombies all the way to the power plant, and it was all uphill – figuratively and literally: once they were out of the roped enclosure, the zombies weren't all that inclined to stay together, and required constant ordering just to keep them from staggering to a halt in mid-march. Fortunately, they didn't seem inclined to eat anyone's brains. Unfortunately, letting the zombies to get too close to the other workers was an open invitation for the guards to attack him again, so Robbie had to remain alert at all times until they'd finally reached the entrance.

Once they'd arrived at the heart of the power plant, all he had to do was wait for the workers to open the massive glass-panelled doors to the furnace, and then order the zombies to step inside – where they were promptly incinerated.

That wasn't the worst of it, though: because he was to "supervise" the act, Robbie had to stay and watch through the insulated portholes as every single zombie was seared down to their bones and dissolved by the heat of the furnace. The sight alone was bad enough; the __smell__ was worse. Once that was done, all he could do was walk back to the enclosure.

Fortunately the guards didn't seem to be paying as much attention to him on this leg of the journey, so along the way, Robbie managed to snatch a few seconds of conversation from other workers bustling across the plaza: from what little they could tell him, all of them were real people from around the world; fresh from being displaced and terrorized by the advent of Weirdmageddon, these unlucky men and women had been rounded up seemingly at random to serve as workers in this weird new city – wherever it was, if it even existed on Earth. As for the zombies, they'd supposedly been shipped in from around the world just like the people, except they were here to serve as fuel for the city: only a handful of people in the entire metropolis had been empowered to command them.

When Robbie finally got back to the enclosure, another batch of zombies was waiting for him, and the whole grisly escort mission started all over again. About the only upside to the whole thing was that he didn't actually recognize any of them. For twenty straight hours, he herded corpses to the incinerator, watched the uncomprehending faces of complete strangers melt off their bones, walked back, intercepted a fist or two from the guards, and did the whole thing all over again.

Eventually, his shift came to an end, whereupon the guards frogmarched him back to his residential block, shoved him into his apartment, shoved a tray of dry bread and gruel into his lap, and locked him in for the night – ready to drag him out of bed in another six hours to do the whole thing all over again.

(And Robbie had thought __high school__ was bad...)

Doubly unfortunately, the zombies couldn't be used for any escape attempts, nor could they be coaxed into attacking anyone – not directly at any rate. Robbie quite naturally found this out the hard way after losing his temper and ordering his current mob of walking dead to kill the nearest guard; all the zombies had done was stand there, staring blankly ahead while the guards had pummelled him into submission.

The next day, Robbie returned to work with two heavily-bandaged hands and a black eye.

Lather, rinse, and repeat. No variation, except on the days Robbie had to actually reanimate the dead and bring back the resulting zombies from the corpse moat on the city's outskirts. Other than that, there was nothing: no entertainment, no free time, no privacy, no meals except at night, and no social interaction except for the few seconds of talk he could get before the guards caught up with him.

Even when he was alone in his cell, there was always a baleful yellow eye staring down at him from the ceiling, and nothing for him to do except wonder about what could have happened to his friends, hoping against hope that Tambry, Wendy, Thompson and the others were still alive somewhere.

Most of all, he hoped that Tambry was okay.

About the only time things really got interesting was the days when some joker (probably Bill) decided to project Robbie's internet history in the sides of buildings, and Robbie spent most of those days hiding his face with embarrassment as the entire plaza laughed at him – all while the banners across the plaza screamed ****"GET ANGRY, YOU WHINING COWARD! PROVE THAT YOU'RE NOT JUST ANOTHER JAMES DEAN WANNABE!"**** at him in furious red letters.

Robbie could never muster more than a split-second of anger at this, let alone a ghost of his old anarchic streak; the beatings had taught him to keep his head down.

So he kept working, kept walking his feet to the bone and wearing his nerves thin in the constant effort of keeping the zombies from wandering off and avoiding corporal punishment. After all, what else was there to do? Where the hell would he go? As far as he could tell, there was nowhere to escape __to__ : outside the city, beyond the putrid boundaries of the corpse moat, the ground dropped away into empty grey skies; there was no ground beyond the city, nor were there any other cities, or any sign that Earth lay somewhere beyond that cloudless grey void. This place, this hell, was its own self-contained world and there was no escaping from it.

Besides, as much as he hated to admit it, he __really__ didn't want to get his fingers broken again.

* * *

Two weeks after he'd arrived in the city, Robbie found himself being flung out of bed for the fourteenth time in a row, this time scarcely bothering to struggle as the guards hurled him out the door. By then, he wasn't expecting much of the day apart from boredom, abuse and the occasional bit of public humiliation; resisting Bill's rule was the furthest thing from his mind, if only because compliance hurt less.

But then, as the assembly line slid into view, something amidst the waiting crowd of zombies caught his eye – a familiar length of vivid red hair glinting faintly in the dull sunlight.

 _ _Wendy?__

He stopped short, half-expecting the vision to disappear, or at the very least to find that he'd been mistaken once he got close enough to see it for what it was. But no: standing just on the edge of the crowd was Wendy Corduroy herself, dressed in the same ragged gear she'd worn when Robbie had last seen her.

Then, just as he was beginning to recover from the shock Robbie's heart did a somersault inside his chest as he recognized the figure standing to Wendy's left; there was no mistaking that shock of purple hair, with its distinctive pink highlight: _**_**Tambry**_**_ _ _.__

Even two weeks of mind-numbing work with the smell of roasting zombies filling his nostrils every other hour hadn't been enough to drive the thought of her out of his head, or make him forget just how much he'd been missing her. If anything, the time he'd spent in this dismal place had actually heightened the longing, the sights and sounds and the sense of helplessness and isolation slowly sharpening everything he'd felt about her to ridiculous extremes – everything he'd left unspoken and bottled up silently building towards an explosion. And now that she was here…

Suddenly, Robbie was in motion, hurling himself down the brushed concrete paving stones at a speed he hadn't reached in what felt like centuries.

He knew that the guards would almost certainly beat him black and blue for running in the plaza, and he was dimly aware that he might have gone slightly mad from lack of company and stimulation, but in that moment, he no longer cared. All that mattered was __getting down there__ and seeing that Tambry was okay, that Wendy was okay, that his friends were there and they'd be together again and all would be right with the world for once.

And as he sped on, he saw more familiar faces waiting for him among the crowd: Thompson was there too, and so were Nate and Lee; the entire congregation was composed entirely of people he'd known from Gravity Falls. Even Dipper and Mabel were here, and Robbie couldn't help but rejoice at the sight of the annoying twins looking back at him from the multitude, if only because now there was hope that __someone here might just have a way of getting out of this hellhole!__

Finally, Robbie skidded to a halt right in front of the enclosure, immediately lunging forward and hugging Tambry fiercely around the shoulders.

"I missed you!" he shrieked, voice on the edge of hysteria. "God, I missed you so much! I missed all of you guys!"

Silence.

"Uh… Tambry? Tambry, are you okay?"

Tambry said nothing; neither did Wendy, Mabel, Dipper or any of the other people waiting in front of him. They just stared blankly ahead of them, eyes dull and unblinking.

"Tambry?" Robbie whispered. "Say something. Please, just say something, anything. Talk to me… __please?"__

And then logic finally caught up with him.

At long last, he noticed the grey skin, the dead gaze, the lifeless bodies, and the one fact that he'd deliberately overlooked up until now – the fact that they were in same enclosure as all the other walking corpses he'd been shepherding for the last two weeks. Tambry, Wendy and all the others weren't going to answer. Just like all the others who'd ended up in this enclosure before them, they were zombies. Tambry, the girl he'd missed more than anything else about the world before Weirdmageddon, was dead.

In that moment, one of the guards delivered another open-handed slap to the back of Robbie's head. Turning around, he saw that the eye-faced monstrosity was once again holding up a message on a piece of paper: __Get to work. These have got to be incinerated by noon.__

For a moment, Robbie's mind refused to process these instructions. Then, he blurted out "But they're my friends!"

 _ _They're necrofuel, to be burned for the sole purpose of keeping you and every other human in this place from freezing to death in the night. Get to work.__

"But-"

The guard brought one massive hand down on Robbie's shoulder, claw-like nails instantly digging deep into his flesh.

 _ _Do you want me to break your hands again?__ The paper read. __I don't care who these people were. Someday, your parents will be here, and you'll be expected to have them melted down like all the rest. Now stop wasting time and make something of your life, you pimple-faced wannabe iconoclast.__

And in that instant, with five syringe-like talons buried in his shoulder, Robbie saw the future:

He saw himself doing as ordered, shepherding the animated corpses of Tambry, Wendy and all his friends and not-quite-friends off to the incinerator; he saw himself watching helplessly as people he'd known and befriended and even loved were slowly rendered down into featureless ash, watching as Tambry's face burned and charred and finally disintegrated in the heat of the furnace. He saw himself doing the whole thing all over again, this time with his parents; and again – sometimes with people he knew, sometimes with complete strangers. Before his eyes, the entire human race died, was reanimated and consumed by the power plant… until eventually the city was empty except for the guards and Robbie himself – the only human being left to burn.

Then the moment passed and Robbie found himself back in reality… and suddenly realized he couldn't bear another minute of this.

With a scream that was probably only audible to dogs, Robbie wrenched himself free of the guard's grip and punched him as hard as he possibly could – right in the middle of his eyeball.

As the guard reeled backwards, Robbie turned to the gaggle of zombies and took to his heels with a shout of "RUN!" A moment later all eighty-five zombies followed, sprinting down the plaza as quickly as their shuffling gait could carry them, bowling over pedestrians and upending garbage cans as they loped away.

Behind them, Robbie could already hear the sounds of the guards clomping after him, but he had a head start of about thirty yards and there were too many zombies between him and them – too many for the guards to reach him easily. As long as he kept moving, he'd be safe; as long as he ordered Tambry, Wendy and the most important members of the horde to the front of the crowd, close to him, they'd be safe from the guards as well… so long as he could get to safety before the bastards caught up.

And safety was just a few yards away: ahead, the plaza came to a short, dissolving back into the tangled streets of the city proper; there were alleyways, derelict buildings, underpasses, bridges, and god only knew what else – a multitude of places where he could hide, where he could keep Tambry and the others safe. All he had to do was get there and make sure the guards didn't chip away at too many members of his little following before then.

Less than ten feet away from him, the guards brought two zombies crashing to the ground; slightly closer to home, a zombie caught its leg on a park bench and went crashing to the ground in a heap, tripping up five more – and by the time they were on their feet again, the guards were already restraining them. Moments later, a quartet of guards pincered in from the left and right, narrowly missing Robbie's closest ranks and cutting a vast swathe through the zombies behind him.

More guards dropped in from above, soaring in from the sky like vultures and scything down almost a dozen zombies between them. But even with members of his little entourage dropping like flies, none of the guards got anywhere near Robbie himself, and Tambry and the others remained completely unharmed.

Had Robbie been thinking clearly, he might have found this a little suspicious; he might have even wondered if the guards were moving a little slower than usual. But in that moment, these thoughts didn't dare enter his head: in that moment, all he cared about was getting himself and his friends to safety.

At long last, the narrowest of the street entrances loomed ahead: there were only twenty zombies left by now, but those were all that he needed. As the buildings rose around him, he spun around, pointed at the few remaining zombies outside of his immediate circle of friends and hollered, "STOP!" Instantly, the zombies stopped short – right in the middle of the alley entrance. As the guards behind him ploughed headlong into the undead barrier, Robbie, Tambry, Wendy and the rest of the zombie escapees sped on down the lane, around the corner and into the welcome obscurity of the alleyways.

But still they kept running onwards, not stopping until at least fifteen minutes later, when they were well into the warren of decrepit backstreets and alleys that wound their way between the city slums, and Robbie was certain they weren't being followed. Only then did he finally relax.

"Okay," he panted. "I think we can relax now. Everyone sit down."

The zombies obediently lowered themselves to the ground; by now, only his friends and not-quite friends remained, the rest of the flock having been scattered all of the plaza and arrested by now.

Naturally, Robbie had no idea what he was going to do now: he knew for a fact that guards didn't often patrol this part of town, hence why they usually kept the alleyways carefully fenced off with razor wire, so at least he didn't have to worry about being caught just yet.

Unfortunately, that was the only bright side to his current situation. Tambry was still dead, Wendy was still dead, Thompson, Nate and Lee were still dead, and the Pines twins were still dead, and presumably they were going to start decomposing soon – something that Robbie didn't care to witness again, not after that incident with "Mr Leaving-It-A-Little-Too-Late" at the funeral home. He couldn't even communicate with his friends: the zombies he'd shepherded couldn't think, let alone speak, and even if you could command them to do so, they'd just be responding to orders. And sooner or later, Robbie would have to face the fact that his friends were dead and gone forever.

But were they? Was death really so permanent in Bill Cipher's new world?

Robbie had seen Bill do all sorts of impossible things in the time he'd been conscious: he'd stopped time, warped gravity, changed people's shapes – Robbie clearly remembered having his own heart ripped out of his chest and being forced to chase it down a flight of stairs, and somehow surviving. Maybe, if Bill could do all that and even grant people the power to animate and control the dead, maybe he could also bring them to __life.__

Perhaps Robbie could find a way of reaching Bill if he moved carefully enough. He didn't know if he was to try and make a deal or figure out some means of threatening him, but somehow, he'd make him restore Tambry and the others.

"I'll find a way," he muttered. "I'll find a way if it kills me."

"Oh __will you?"__ sneered an obnoxious voice. "I'd love to hear your ideas on the subject, Zits."

Robbie very slowly looked up, and found himself staring into the face of Bill Cipher himself – accompanied by no less than a hundred and fifty guards.

Then, everything went black.

* * *

"I gotta say, Zits, you're even more boring than I thought."

Robbie jolted awake, immediately lurching away from Bill's voice on instinct – only to find that, wherever he was sitting, he'd been thoroughly strapped in.

"I mean, where's that famous rebellious streak I heard so much about? Where's the spirit of the awesome Robbie V and the Tombstones? Where's the vandalism? Where's the TPing, the egging, the petty theft, the graffiti, the backtalk, the mischief, the __chutzpah?__ I'd have thought you'd at least have a reputation to defend after getting bailed out by a twelve-year-old!"

"Wh… what are you talking about? Why are you doing this to me?"

"Because I was honestly hoping to see if you had it in you to be a __real__ rebel, not just another dime-a-dozen teenage wannabe-rebel poseur."

Somewhere deep within Robbie's badly-mangled sense of pride, a tiny spark flared. "Listen, __pal,__ " Robbie snarled, "I'm no poseur; I don't care who told you-"

"Nobody told me anything, Zits. I've been watching you just like I watched the rest of Gravity Falls, and you got on my nerves real quickly: I mean, it's like you don't know how to define yourself except as a rebel, like you don't feel alive unless you're graffitiing a muffin on a water tower or playing in some tone-deaf band."

"FOR THE LAST TIME, IT'S NOT A MUFFIN!" Robbie exploded. "IT'S A-"

"Mushroom cloud, I know, I know. Normally I wouldn't mind – it's always fun to be an iconoclast – but you made being a rebel look __boring,__ zits. Like, what's the point of rebelling if you can only do it by egging some loser's house? What's the point of ruining stuff if it's just to annoy authority figures and impress some hypothetically like-minded girl? What's the point of defying the system if you don't wreck __all of it?__ And believe it or not, you got even more boring after Weirdmageddon went global. I mean, all my playthings gave me at least something to work with for their psychodramas – even Question Mark gave me something to work with; all __you've__ me are hormones, teenage angst, text messages, selfies, and one insipid relationship after another."

"Then why did you bother playing with me at all?"

"Because I thought I could make a real rebel out of you if I gave you the right challenge. I mean, there's enough material there for an entire century of entertainment: you could lead a rebellion, be defeated, go to prison, be tortured, lead an uprising among the inmates and break out! You could set yourself up as a subversive ringleader in the underbelly of society, start a proper revolution, overthrow the guard leadership and institute a new government with yourself as the head… and then you could see the whole thing fall apart as the new society becomes just as bad as the last, leaving you to either resist and be overthrown, or play along and get killed when a foreign power invades! That would have been so much fun to see in action - and you didn't have the balls to even try it. Faced with something you could __really__ rebel against, you turned into an even bigger coward than usual, and you didn't even lose your temper when the public saw your internet history! I mean, you actually thought of using the zombies to attack people – not that it worked – so why didn't you go further? You could have stolen chemicals, made bombs, inspired innocent people to die in your name! Seriously, I gave you an adventure, and you couldn't bring yourself to have fun with any of it."

And with that, the lights flickered on, and Robbie suddenly found himself sitting in the middle of what appeared to be a movie theatre, his arms and legs firmly strapped to the chair. Bill was sitting right next to him, a massive bucket of popcorn in his lap.

"Well," the top-hatted triangle continued, "If you can only rebel for the sake of that purple-haired texting machine, that's fine. You wanna spend the rest of your life on the streets with zombies, you do that. In fact, I __want__ to see how you deal with it: with a bit of setup, that might be just as much fun as the rebellion idea… but first, you're gonna pay the price for wasting my time."

He waved a hand, and suddenly, Robbie found his eyes being forced open by two cold metallic clamps, his headrest suddenly fastening down on his skull like a vice, keeping his gaze focussed on the distant screen.

"Oh hey," said Robbie, trying not to sound as pained as he felt. "I've seen this in a film somewhere! Aren't you gonna make me watch violent movies set to classical music?"

"Why the hell would I do that?" Bill demanded, drawing a bottle and a pipette from seemingly nowhere. "You'd only enjoy it!"

"Good point."

"No, I want you to watch something a bit more personal…"

As Bill gently moistened Robbie's eyes with a pipette, the screen lit up, displaying a montage of brightly-coloured scenes – all of them depicting people around Gravity Falls, all of them shot from Robbie's perspective: his memories, project for all to see. Tambry looking up from her cellphone to smile at him; Wendy finally forgiving him, clapping him on the back; Thompson juggling eggs and splattering them across his face while Lee and Nate laughed; Mabel playing matchmaker; Dipper giving him a free shot; his parents cooing over him, indulgent as ever. For good measure, the whole montage was set to "Dear Hearts and Gentle People," a piece of music that he hadn't heard since the last time he'd visited Grandma's house.

"I want you to commit these faces to memory, Zits. I want you to remember every single face you see on the screen… because you're never gonna see any of them ever again."

"Oooh," Robbie sneered, as more eyedrops rained down on him, accompanied by a curious tingling sensation. "Real creepy, dude. So I'm never going to see my friends and family ever again – so what? They're already dead! What am I losing?"

"Reality is infinitely flexible from my angle, acne face," said Bill, as he applied more eyedrops. "You might have a zombie version of Tambry here in the city, for example, but your girlfriend might just be alive and well in another part of the world, but you'll never know, because you'll never get a chance to see her in your lifetime."

"Oh." The tingling had turned to an itching for some reason.

"And by that, I mean that your eyedrops have been laced with hydrochloric acid."

"WHAT?"

"Pretty self-explanatory, Zits. Don't forget to scream."

And then the agony rippled out across Robbie's face, a scalding pain that seared his eyelids away and left his eyeballs to bubble and simmer wildly in their sockets. His eyesight already beginning to warp and dim, Robbie tried to reach up, to wipe the acid away from his eyes in a desperate attempt to save his vision, but even if he could have managed such a thing his arms were still strapped to the armrests of the chair. In the end, he could only sit there, screaming in fear and pain as his eyeballs blistered, burned, and finally melted away, plunging him into darkness once again – this time for good.

The last thing he heard before he lost consciousness was the sound of his own agonized screams drowned out by the infuriatingly jaunty refrain of "Dear Hearts and Gentle People."

* * *

During his days spent working as a shepherd for zombies in a city set up to torture him into becoming a rebel, Robbie had often wondered how his life could possibly get any worse.

To his immense displeasure, he now had his answer: being blind and homeless in the same city.

Quite apart from being forced to eke out a miserable existence around the alleyways and street corners, the weather had taken a turn for the worse since he'd gone blind, and he spent far too many days of the week being soaked to the bone by storms or being washed away in the flash-floods sweeping up from the sewers. Most of his waking hours were spent begging for food.

Before his blindness, this would have been a waste of time given that the meals were only served to cell-occupying workers, but apparently the city had changed just for him. Now, people could buy food with supply tokens awarded in place of actual money. Unfortunately, most of the time, the people he begged from barely had enough tokens to feed themselves and few were willing to spare any on him; worse still, the eateries refused to serve Robbie, and being found with tokens on him usually carried the risk of being beaten up by the guards monitoring the eateries. So, his only option was to wait until a food-toting customer crept by... or go back to trying to catch rats.

On the upside, at least he still had his friends with him. True, there were starting to smell a bit, but he could live with that.

On the downside, he was assaulted by fellow workers who finally had an outlet for their frustrations and anxieties in the form of someone who was even lower than them on the social ladder.

One morning, Robbie awoke to find someone kicking him.

"Who's there?" he croaked.

"Your messenger, apparently," grumbled a voice from above. "Some guy just walked up to me and told me to give you this letter."

"… wha… who? Why?"

"Some guy calling himself Mr A."

"Mr __who?"__

"Don't make me repeat it. And don't bother to ask me what he looked like: he was wearing a mask– along with a suit and a sash for some goddamn reason."

"Did he say what he wanted?"

"Other than to deliver this letter? Nah. He told me he'd had trouble finding where you'd ended up – and by the sounds of things, he didn't know you were blind. Said he was having trouble "seeing" through this reality, whatever the hell that means. God only knows what he'd want to do with __you__ of all people, but he paid me enough supply tokens to compensate me for my time, so what the hell. Here."

Something small and papery landed in his lap.

"You couldn't read it to me?" Robbie asked.

"Have you got any tokens to spare? I might be willing to help out if I was suitably reimbursed."

"…I'm a __beggar."__

"Doesn't mean you don't have any tokens."

"You're __asking a beggar for money."__

"I take it you don't have any, then?"

"Dude, I think that was pretty self-explanatory."

"Then go fuck yourself."

As the pedestrian stomped away, Robbie turned over the envelope in his hands, wondering if anyone on the street could possibly be bothered to read the letter to him. Would anyone out there be kind enough to help out, or would this just end up with the guards marching over to investigate? The latter was a safer bet.

He paused, and turned in the direction of where the zombies were presumably still sitting.

"Do any of you feel up to reading anything?"

The zombies, of course, said nothing.

"Fan _ _tastic,"__ Robbie sighed. "Tambry, would you mind giving me a hug – if you can?"

From somewhere behind him, there was a rustling of bones shuffling across the concrete, and then a familiar pair of decomposing arms slowly wrapped themselves around him.

"Thank you."

* * *

A/N: __Up next - Ford's game!__


	10. Daedalus Alone

A/N: Aaaand the latest chapter, ladies and gentlemen! I wanted to post this a few days ago, but anxieties got in the way; plus, I felt this one needed to be a bit longer than the rest - after all, I have a lot of Ford's insecurities to cover over the course of the chapter. Before we begin, I'd like to thank everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed - you give me strength, ladies and gentlemen.

 **Kraven the Hunter:** Yep, Bill just loves rigging the game in his favour and mocking the players for losing. I love the idea you brought out - I've heard so much about the "Emperor Joker" story, but I've never been able to track down a copy. As for what idea I'll actually employ when the time comes, I hope it lives up to expectations.

 **Fantasy Fan 223:** Thank you so much for the artwork and the series-wide review! I look forward to seeing more. In the meantime, I can only say that the mysteries regarding Mr A's true identity will be cleared up in the next few chapters; be warned, it's a little multifaceted. And yes, Ford is going to suffer in this chapter - a lot, and immediately, too. Thanks again for all your hard work and lovely reviews!

 **Northgalus2002:** Wow, I didn't think this was possible - me managing to invoke sympathy for a seriously disliked character twice in one fanfic-writing career. First Madam Morrible now this? Anyway, thanks so much for your review, and I hope I can continue the trend with Ford.

 **Guest:** To answer your question, I draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources for the creation of the various "games," - in general terms, "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream," "It's A Good Life," "Fallout 3" "Black Mirror," "Doctor Who: The Axis of Insanity," to name but a few forms of inspiration. Meanwhile, yes - Robbie got his heart cut open in the Fearamid, while Gideon was being given a foot massage by a swarm of angry bullet ants. As for who Mr A is... yes, he's definitely someone we've seen over the course of the show - or at least, he appears to be. Thanks again for your review - I don't mind long reviews, believe me!

 **A Fan:** I love your assessment of Robbie's character - although in simultaneous defence and condemnation of the kid, he's also extremely stupid. This is the same guy, remember, who made the mistake of stopping to take a selfie in the face of _Weirdmageddon._ With this in mind, I imagine Mr A's letter will consist of ten paragraphs of "STOP THINKING ABOUT YOUR LOST PHONE AND APPLY A LITTLE IMAGINATION, ROBBIE." Technically, Robbie's zombies aren't allowed to actually hurt or kill anyone... but there's a lot of loopholes in that caveat, most of which Robbie himself hasn't even grasped. One day, he might do so... but until then, it's a life on the streets for him.

 **Allotrios:** Thanks so much for your detailed review - the study of Mr A and who he might be was a joy to read, and I especially liked your description of Bill - "psychopathic frathouse gambler" just captures so much of his essence! Anyway, I sympathize with the many and varied problems with phone keyboard programming (believe me, predictive text only makes things more frustrating), and as always, I'm honestly just glad to receive reviews at all! I hope this chapter lives up to expectations, and leaves you hungry for more! Thanks once again!

Anyway - time's up! Feel free to furnish me with reviews, comments, critiques, theories, typo alerts, tvtropes recommendations, and all manner of discussion! Spread the word far and wide! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine. Also, spoiler, there's a not-so subtle shoutout in this chapter to another dimension-hopping animated series: for those of you who spot it, this show is not mine.

* * *

Ford had thought Bill had been angry with him before. He'd thought, back in the days of searing electrocution and threats against his family, that he'd seen the limits of his one-time Muse's wrath.

In the days since then, he'd come to realize that he'd been deeply mistaken.

He hadn't even come _close_ to seeing the true depths of Bill Cipher's anger: the temper tantrum Ford had seen on display in the Fearamid's throne room was barely a shadow of the hatred that oozed from every atom of Bill's constructed body in the days that followed his final victory.

The reasons were obvious: even though Bill had won, even though Weirdmageddon had gone global and he now held dominion over the entire planet with the rest of the universe soon to follow, the resistance had soured his good mood; opposition from Dipper, Mabel and the rest of the Shacktron crew was bad enough, but the fact that they'd actually succeeded in wounding him was nothing short of infuriating to Bill. And yet it was more, so much more than that, for they'd come close to ending his life; not only had they almost succeeded in completing the Wheel, but Stanley had gotten within inches of destroying Bill once and for all.

They hadn't just hurt Bill: they'd _frightened_ him.

And in the days that followed the conquest of Earth, Ford found himself on the receiving end of his captor's wounded pride and simmering rage.

This time, he didn't even bother with electricity. After an eternity spent watching Earth's history play out before his eyes, an entire toyshop of grisly instruments and techniques was open to him, and with no further need to keep Ford's mind intact, Bill gloried in the monstrous inspiration that human atrocities had provided him with. In the first session alone, he tore off all twelve of Ford's fingernails and bathed the bloody tips in molten lead, before taking a pneumatic drill to his kneecaps; he syringed his eyeballs, wrenched teeth out of his mouth with pliers, sliced his ribcage open and sunk nails deep into his exposed organs – except for his heart, which Bill soaked in gasoline and set on fire; he'd even prised off the top of his skull and played around with his grey matter, only keeping his newest toy's body from shutting down through sheer force of willpower. But even with supernatural forces sustaining his body, there were limits on how much he could endure - or perhaps limits on what Bill would allow him to survive: halfway through that first session, Ford lost consciousness and quietly expired.

Moments later, Bill brought him back to life, fully-healed and ready to be tortured all over again.

Ford tried to maintain his dignity in spite of the pain; he tried to stay silent no matter what torment was inflicted upon him, but the pain invariably proved too much. In the end, he always screamed. When he wasn't screaming, he was asking questions for as long as Bill would allow them: what had happened to the others? Where were Dipper and Mabel? Had he saved Stanley after all, or at the very least brought him back from the dead? Was there any way Bill could be persuaded to let the three of them go – to let them live out their lives beyond the Fearamid in some vague semblance of peace?

But of course, Bill never answered: to do so would be a kindness, and Earth's new Lord and Master just wasn't in the mood for anything other than pure, unadulterated sadism.

As the sessions continued, Ford was subjected to almost every form of physical torture under the sun, and quite a few methods of execution too: beating, flogging, branding, garrotting, picketing, drowning, crushing, scalping, boiling, disembowelling – all methods were fair game so long as the pain was immediate and extremely visible. Thumbscrews reduced his fingers to bloody pulp; the rack tore his ligaments and fractured his spine; the Iron Maiden perforated his body in no less than two dozen places and left him to slowly bleed out; poisonous snakes and stinging insects assaulted his defenceless flesh and left his body a pus-weeping necrotic mess; the Brazen Bull slowly cooked him alive, frying the meat off his bones; the Boot crushed his feet to useless lumps of pulverised bone; hungry rats gnawed at his shredded tissues; the Blood Eagle killed him relatively quickly, but not before Bill had found the time to crush his lungs in his bare hands. And since Ford was technically guilty of attempted regicide, Bill even brought out the Crocodile Shears – just to prove that there were more painful things than the Judas Cradle or the Chokepear.

But for the grand finale of this grisly spectacle, Bill flayed him alive: with one swift gesture of the hand, he peeled the skin off Ford's entire body from head to toe, leaving bare, bloody muscles exposed to the air. For five long days, Bill left him dangling there in his manacles, screaming in agony as raw nerve endings fired and infection raged across his bare muscle. And then he died – again.

When he awoke, re-skinned and lying on the hard stone floor in his underwear, Bill was staring down at him, his expression now utterly inscrutable.

Ford groaned, almost in exasperation by now. After a hundred and twenty gruelling hours without skin, his nervous system had almost completely burned out: he was dimly aware that Bill was poking him in the thigh with his cane, but he could barely feel the impact; he knew that he should probably be freezing cold, what with lying half-naked on a stone floor for god only knew how many hours, but in that moment all he could feel was numbness. The same went for his emotions: after so many days of continuous torture, any sense of fear, grief, distress or confusion had long since dried up and blown away like so many dead leaves. At present, all he felt was exhaustion and numbness.

"So, what's next?" he sighed. "Do you still have a few human torture devices up your sleeve, or is it time you started plundering alien cultures for new ways of making me suffer?"

Bill just eyed him curiously. Was it Ford's imagination, or had the deranged triangle's temper finally calmed?

"Well? What are you going to do now?"

"Now?" Bill echoed. "Sixer, if you have to actually _ask_ that, I think you've spent too much time with that idiot brother of yours; he's had some time to rub off on you by the looks of things. Seriously, I'm amazed you can smell the blood through the stink of concentrated loser."

Somewhere in the back of Ford's mind, something akin to anger flared violently. "Don't you _dare_ talk about him like-"

Bill waved a hand, and suddenly Ford's vocal cords went dead in his throat.

"Aw, forget about him, Fordsie," the dream-demon sneered. "The way things stand at the moment, your brother's an even bigger non-entity than usual – and I hope you enjoyed that little nugget of information, because that's all you're going to hear of ol' Fez for the immediate future. You've got more important things to think about."

 _And I notice you never specifically stated if Stanley was alive or not. How convenient. That way you can bait me with the promise of seeing him again. The same goes for Dipper, Mabel, Fiddleford, and everyone else on the planet I care about._

"Now," Bill continued, barely able to contain his laughter. "You'd best pay attention, Sixer. It's time you gave some serious thought to your future…"

* * *

When Ford next opened his eyes, he was lying on a cold marble floor with his battered coat draped over him like a blanket.

Immediately he realized that he was no longer in the Fearamid: quite apart from the differing composition of the stone beneath him, it didn't have the same sense of reverberating power that so readily distinguished Bill's fortress – a reflection of its master. Wherever he'd ended up, it was clearly far away from the nerve centre of the new regime, but other than that, he had no idea where the hell he was. Maybe he was somewhere amidst the ruins of human civilization, maybe he'd been stranded on one of the other planets of the Solar System, or maybe he'd been imprisoned some pocket dimension created solely to torment him – there was no way of telling at present.

He couldn't even see the room he'd arrived in: lit only by a crude wooden torch hanging from a sconce on the wall directly behind, the chamber was choked with shadows, rendered almost featureless by the darkness that shrouded the walls.

Worse still, his pocket flashlight was nowhere to be found: his coat had been emptied of gadgets and equipment.

However, once he'd gotten to his feet, dressed and taken the torch from its fixture, he eventually managed to discern a few recognizable pieces of scenery hidden amidst the gloom: perhaps a hundred feet away from him, there was a fireplace set into the opposite wall, easily fifteen feet wide and eight feet deep, sadly without firewood. Meanwhile, more sconces protruded from the curving walls nearby, each one bearing an unlit torch – which Ford quickly went about igniting, if only because he wanted a clear view of what dangers might be waiting for him. And as the room slowly lit up, Ford finally saw in perfect detail the chamber that was now his prison.

He was standing in the middle of an enormous marble rotunda well over a hundred and fifty feet in diameter; supported by imposing Doric columns, its shadowy roof curved upwards into an impressive dome, most of which was still blanketed in shadows even as Ford went about lighting the remaining torches. Unsurprisingly, no windows graced the walls of the rotunda, guaranteeing more darkness and fewer escape attempts. However, to Ford's surprise, there was in fact an open door at the opposite end of the chamber, and from what little he could see from here, it led to a long hallway terminating in a crossroads.

This was either an illusion designed to get his hopes up, an open invitation to the next part of whatever sick game Bill was playing, or some combination of the two; so far, the chances of it being a legitimate path to freedom lay somewhere around the less-than-zero mark.

With the room slowly brightening, Ford now had a clear view of the rotunda's walls, and it wasn't long before he noticed the murals: between each pair of columns, the marble walls had been painted with a spectacular array of images and scenes, most of which seemed to have emerged from Earth's classical mythology – more inspiration for Bill's twisted playground.

Of course, it wasn't long before Ford noticed the subtle-as-a-brick symbolism in play: here was Prometheus chained to a rock, an eagle gnawing hungrily at his entrails; here was Pandora unleashing all the myriad evils upon the world, leaving Hope trapped; here was Arachne transformed into a spider for daring to outdo Athena; here was Midas blessed and cursed with his famous transmuting touch; Sisyphus eternally pushing a boulder up a mountainside; Tantalus grasping for food that was forever out of reach; Salmoneus blasted with a thunderbolt for hubris.

All condemned for pride, for foolishness, but above all else, for the audacity to trifle with the omnipotent.

And yet…

There was something clearly missing from the murals, something so obvious and predictable that it made no sense for it to be excluded. But then he realized that the torchlight was finally bright enough sweep away the shadows hiding the dome, and though it was still dim and hard to discern the finer details, Ford could just about recognize the fresco decorating the rotunda's ceiling:

Icarus falling from the sky, wings melting away as he plunged to his death in the waters of the Aegean.

"Very funny, Bill," Ford grumbled.

However, just as he was starting to wonder what was expected of him, he happened to let his hands stray to the pockets of his coat – and found an envelope waiting for him. He already knew who it was from, of course; he didn't need to see the cyclopean-eye seal in the electric-blue wax to hazard a guess.

 _Hiya, Fordsie!_ it read. _Welcome to your new home: the Dome of Wishes at the heart of the Oneiron's Labyrinth!_

 _I'm sure you want to know what I've got in mind for you, so I won't mince words; in fact, I'll be more honest with you than I have been with anyone else playing my games. I said I wanted you to think very seriously about your future, and I meant it – so I set up this place to bring out the very best in you._

 _I built this place to make you perfect, to bring out the being I always thought you could be if you gave up everything that held you back – friends, family, morality, hope, sanity, the usual. I said you could become one of us, and I meant it: this place will make sure of it._

 _Until you've proven that you've cast aside the stifling bonds of human mentality, you'll stay here, with all necessities provided: if you want food or water, just go down the corridor and take the southwest path at the crossroads; if you're looking for a bathroom, there's one on the northwest path; if you want firewood, you'll find some down the south-east path. You want to find a way out? No problem: just make your way to the northeast and you'll be in the Labyrinth._

 _Want to find your way_ through _the Labyrinth? Well, that's up to you, Sixer. No luxuries afforded, unless you ask._

 _Now, if you want something else – a book, a gun, central heating, a bit of peace and quiet – all you have to do is stand in the centre of the rotunda, ask for it loudly and clearly, and it'll appear._

 _But here's the twist: for every wish you make, you'll change. For every request, you'll be infused with a tiny fragment of the same power the Henchmaniacs and I wield: enough wishes, and you'll be one of us – all-powerful, greater than you could possibly imagine, just like I promised you._

 _And before you start thinking that this is a blessing in disguise and you'll be able to defeat me by making enough wishes and imbuing yourself with premature godhood, here's another twist: your_ brain _will change as well, restructuring and reconfiguring itself with every atom of Weirdness you absorb – until you see the world the way I do. Your precious empathy will be gone, your will to resist me will be dead, and any inhibitions you possessed will have vanished._

 _Then and only then will you be allowed to leave – once you're as crazy as I am and you've accepted your position as my newest Henchmaniac. How does the role of resident secondary genius sound? The boys aren't too big on brains, in case you hadn't noticed, and it's been a long time since I had a decent conversation with anyone inside the gang. It'll be fun, trust me._

 _No, you can't wish to have the alterations to your brain undone. I write the rules here._

 _And no, you can't ask to save the lives of your brother or Pine Tree or Shooting Star, or ask to see what they're up to. You can get that idea right out of your head, thank you very much._

 _But you_ can _ask for a way out. Question is, are you prepared to pay the price, to see what your wish will do to your mind?_

 _Now, you might be saying to yourself, "But Bill, why are you doing this to me? What did I do to deserve this? Was it something to do with me and my deadbeat brother almost killing you that one time?" Well, let's make this crystal clear: all that assassination attempt business is just so much water under the bridge by now; besides, I blew off all the steam I needed to by watching you bleed to death twenty-eight times._

 _No, I'm doing this because you disappointed me thirty years ago, because if you'd stayed by my side you could have had_ _ **everything**_ _– ultimate power, the respect and worship of the entire human race, a whole new universe to explore, create and destroy at whim – and you threw it all away because that neurotic hillbilly chickened out. I'm doing this because this is the only way I can make you honest – with me and yourself. This is the only way I can make you admit to the truth._

 _And the truth is that you were happier with me than you've ever been your entire life: I was the only person who could think on the same level as you, the only one who accepted you for what you truly were, and I was (and still am) more interesting than anyone you've ever met before – more than your family, more than your friends, more than any of the mysteries of Gravity Falls. Face it, you enjoyed having me as a muse. You liked being told what to do. You liked realizing just how insignificant the human race was in the grand scheme of things. You liked being possessed. You liked waking up naked in the woods with no idea how you got there. You liked finding all those weird little cuts and bruises on your body and not knowing how you got them. You liked being alone. You liked being helpless._

 _You liked being_ **MINE.**

 _And the only thing worse than watching you pretend that you didn't like it was watching you pretend that you preferred spending time with literally anyone else. I mean, do you honestly expect me to believe that you wanted friendship with that Southern-fried hick nerd? You seriously think that ignorant, swindling loser you call a brother could_ ever _understand you the way I did? Oh, and while we're on the subject of friends and family, your attempts to bond with that pockmark-foreheaded little freak and his maladjusted sweater-wearing bitch of a sister were nothing short of sad._

 _So, this is how I remind you of what good friends we can be._

 _This is how I make you perfect._

 _Have fun – and remember: all you have to do is wish._

 _Love, Bill._

* * *

After that, Ford went to work on exploring his new home, careful to avoid saying anything within earshot of the rotunda's centre just in case it was misconstrued as a wish.

 _No wishing. No deals. If I'm gonna find a way out and save the others, I'll do it on my terms, not_ his.

Once he had checked literally every single wall of the rotunda for hidden doors, teleporters, magic sigils or anything else that could feasibly be used for an escape attempt, he left the rotunda and followed the corridor as far as the crossroads.

Just as Bill had promised, the road to the southwest led to food and water: just a few yards down that corridor, he found the finely-carved marble walls dwindling away into rough limestone with every step, until he finally found himself at the entrance to a stadium-sized cavern, aglow with phosphorescence and crowned with dozens of stalagmites. At the very centre of the cave sat a massive subterranean lake, and for several hundred yards around its shores, fungi grew in colossal patches – _edible_ fungi.

Though experience had taught Ford not to take anything Bill said or did at face value, it seemed _fairly_ reasonable to assume that his jailer wouldn't have gone to all this trouble to put him here and then poison him. So, plucking one of the mushrooms from the nearest patch, he took a bite – and immediately cringed at the distinctly vinegary flavour. The lake water wasn't much of an improvement: it was bitter and acerbic, and left an aftertaste that combined the scintillating flavours of expired grapefruit juice and antiseptic mouthwash.

 _All necessities provided, no luxuries afforded. Guess you were being honest about that much._

Meanwhile, the bathroom was every bit as disgusting as expected, consisting mainly of a deep pit dug in the ground and a perpetual rainstorm cascading down on him from the ceiling. On the upside, at least there was a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and toilet paper – even if it did have the consistency of sandpaper.

As for his source of firewood, the room to the southeast contained an entire forest, dark and dense and apparently infinite despite being contained in one small underground container; here, the only advantages he'd been provided with was a small hand-axe, a saw, and a flashlight (presumably for navigating the deeper reaches).

Well, a flashlight made sense: Bill wouldn't want him accidentally burning himself alive by bringing a torch into the forest; he'd had enough of _physical_ torture by the looks of things. Of course, he certainly didn't have any qualms about Ford screwing up his back by cutting down trees and dragging them back to the fireplace on his own.

 _Come on, Stanford_ , he told himself. _Count your blessings. Everyone on the planet's probably suffering worse than you are at this point: at least you've got water, food, heat and toiletries... and by the looks of things, there's nothing dangerous on the premises. Once you've gotten your bearings, you'll be able to find a way out, and with a little bit of luck, you'll be able to return the favour and rescue Dipper, Mabel, Fiddleford, and Stanley. And then…_

Ford sighed. What _would_ he do next? Even if he could escape, even if he could rescue Dipper and Mabel, even if Stanley was alive and within reach, defeating Bill was almost impossible now: by now, Earth's nacho overlord would have taken steps to make sure that the Wheel was no longer a viable possibility – maybe by killing all possible participants or just altering the physical laws that allowed the Wheel to work – and a second try at the Memory Gun assassination wasn't likely to be of much use either, especially considering how easily Bill had spotted it the last time.

Come to think of it, why had that last, desperate gambit failed in the first place? It _should_ have worked: Stanley's performance had been nothing short of flawless, the con had been virtually foolproof; Bill should have fallen for it hook, line and sinker. So, how had he cottoned on to Stanley's plan? Ford wracked his memories of the event, trying to see past the shock and grief he'd felt at the sight of Stanley's mortal wound, but nothing sprung to mind.

 _Nevermind that. Focus on the task at hand. Focus on finding a way out and saving your family, and then you can think about the whys and the why-nots. And above all, NO WISHING._

Sighing deeply, Ford braced himself for the worst and began the long slow march down the northeast pathway that led to his only available escape route: even from here, less than a few yards down the passage, he could see another junction waiting for him, every single corridor leading to another crossroads, a vast interconnecting network of halls and paths that formed what could only be the Labyrinth.

 _So what does that make me? Theseus? Or am I supposed to be the Minotaur? Well, if I'm right, I've started out at the very centre of the maze, so mabey it's the latter after all. Well, no enchanted thread or helpful princess for me, but hopefully I'll be able to figure out a way through without having to break out the black sails: after all, it's not as if I'm short on time anymore. Bill's already won._

* * *

He'd barely gone fifty yards into the Labyrinth when the first obstacle hit him head-on. One minute he was walking down the corridor, carefully marking his path on the walls with cave mud; the next-

He was kneeling in the dirt, his arms manacled in front of him; all around him, the sound of calliope music fused seamlessly with the shrieks and jeers of the crow, while the smell of candyfloss, sweat, popcorn, blood, hotdogs and fresh human excrement mingled into a hideous carnival stench. But it wasn't until he opened his eyes and saw the frenzied, grinning faces of the audience leering down at him, that he finally realized exactly where he was – where he'd always feared he'd end up.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" thundered the barker, resplendent in his garish yellow coat and shiny stovepipe hat. "Boys and girls! Children of all ages! Behold the freaks: here we have the amazing intellectual six-fingered man! Inside, for your delight and dedication, he displays both physical and mental abnormality, with theories no sane man would possess and abominations of the flesh no human being would dare tolerate!"

Ford wilted under the mocking gaze of the crowd: he couldn't escape his manacles and he couldn't remove his hand's from the audience's view; he couldn't even move without the barker giving him a swift kick to his side. All he could do was kneel there, tormented on all sides by the laughter of the crowd, their taunts and insults washing over him like so much vitriol. And then, just when he thought it couldn't possibly get any worse-

All of sudden, he was back in the Labyrinth, lying face-down on the cold marble floor.

Had he merely dreamed the freakshow? It had _felt_ real – and still did: his ribs ached where the barker had kicked him, his wrists stung from the manacles, his knees still recalled the cold and damp of the mud as if he'd really been there. Maybe it had been some kind of impossibly vivid dream, maybe it had been some hyper-realistic illusion, or maybe reality itself had warped around him; it was impossible to tell – with Bill Cipher, the three options were virtually indistinguishable.

So, taking a deep breath, he got to his feet and continued on down the corridor. Finally reaching the next junction, he took the northward path, pausing only to hastily graffiti another marker on the wall. This time, he was bracing himself for whatever the Labyrinth was about to throw at him. This time he was ready – or as ready as he possibly could be given that he had no idea what was going to happen. And then, just as the next junction crept into view-

There was a cough from the passageway to his left, and Ford felt his heart freeze in his chest as he recognized the figure stumbling towards him.

" _Stanley?"_ he whispered.

Stanley groaned and nodded. He was still partly obscured by the wall he was currently clinging to, but Ford could already tell that his brother was very badly hurt: even from here, it was clear he'd left a very long trail of bloody handprints along the last eighty feet of the corridor leading here. Then, as he finally struggled onwards, Ford saw that his shirt was _soaked_ with blood from collar to belt; this time, there was no gaping hole burn in his chest, no clear injury – just gallons upon gallons of blood.

He was trying to say something, trying to form words, but whatever had happened to him had clearly made a mess of his throat: all that escaped his lips were harsh, desperate gasps for air, and sick, wheezing gurgles. Medicine wasn't Ford's field of study, but he'd learned enough in his years wandering the multiverse to recognize all the horrible things those sounds could mean – among other things, blood pooling in Stanley's lungs, fatal necrosis of the respiratory system, aquatic mutations – and at this particular juncture, all of that knowledge was of zero help whatsoever because he didn't have the tools to treat any of it; his coat had been emptied of gadgetry and there was nothing at hand to improvise with apart from his own clothes.

For five seconds, Ford could only stare in spellbound horror at the sight of his brother shambling down the corridor, mortally wounded, almost certainly on the brink of death; right then and there, all he could focus on were the words _oh dear god, please not again._

Then, Stanley's knees began to buckle; spell broken, Ford hurried forward just in time to catch him before he hit the ground. As soon as he'd finished lowering him the rest of the way he sprang into action, trying to find the source of the wound, trying to find some means of staunching the blood, of healing the injuries once he found them – even though every rational thought in his head insisted that Stanley was dying and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Then, just as he was hastily doffing his coat in a desperate attempt to improvise a bandage, Stanley finally managed to force a few coherent words past his bloodstained lips.

"It's… too late," he muttered.

"Stanley, please don't try to speak; you've been badly hurt-"

"Too late… for both of us…"

And then-

Stanley was gone. The corridor was empty, the blood had vanished from the walls, and Ford was left staring at the place where his brother had been lying, blood on his hands and heart hammering in shock.

 _Another_ illusion?

Did this mean that Stanley was alive and unharmed somewhere out there, or did it mean he was already dead?

Before he could focus on the question, he heard the sound of screaming from somewhere to the south, back down the corridor he'd just emerged from: it was difficult to tell from here, but those screaming voices might just belong to Dipper and Mabel.

Though by now suspicious of any potential illusions/dreams/reality warps, Ford hurried over to investigate. Breaking into a run, he charged down the hall, picking up speed as the shrieks and howls grew more and more desperate; but no sooner had he rounded the final corner, the noise stopped – and promptly restarted, this time several hundred yards away.

As an experiment, Ford followed the sound: once again, as soon as he'd reached the corridor where the screaming had emanated from, the noise faded out and started up again in a different corridor entirely. More to the point, it didn't take Ford long to notice that these screams were quite clearly leading him back along his route, forcing him to return to the rotunda.

 _So that's the other challenge of the Labyrinth,_ he realized. _It's not just finding your way through the maze: it's continuing even in the face of all the horrors this place can throw at you._

He was halfway through retracing his steps to the point where he'd met the illusory Stanley, when a thunderous roar split the air, and Ford looked up just in time to see something out of his nightmares barrelling down the corridor towards him, an unholy manifestation of all the bullies who had terrorized him throughout his life now merged into one repulsive, multi-bodied abomination: howling cacophonously from a face comprised of at least ten conjoined skulls, clawing at the air with grasping claws made from dozens of merged arms, it was so large that its ponderous bulk filled the hall from floor to ceiling, and every single pair of eyes it possessed was now focussed entirely on Ford.

 _Alright then,_ Ford thought. _Is this just another illusion Bill's cooked up just to frighten me, or is this thing a proper threshold guardian?_

A moment later, the bully-beast slammed into him at high speed, scooping him up in a writhing mass of conjoined limbs and tossing him over its shoulder, handily banging Ford's head against the ceiling with a cerebrum-jangling _clunk_ of metal skullplate on marble. Then, it carried him away, hauling him bodily back down the path – towards the waiting rotunda.

Winded by the impact and stunned from the collision with the ceiling, Ford could barely struggle against the monster's vice-like grip – and even if he had found it within himself to resist, exhaustion was once again creeping up on him, bringing with it a smothering tide of apathy. Bill had once again stacked the deck in his favour: trying to get through the Labyrinth would be impossible at present; Ford would have to rethink his approach if he ever hoped to escape, and the easiest way of finding the time to do so was to just let the monster return him to his prison.

And then, as the corridor ceilings blurred overhead, he heard the sounds of another illusion in action: raised voices echoing down the hall towards him, the sounds of grudges exchanged by phone, of a bitter old man and a disillusioned young man screaming insults at one another as long-dormant tensions left simmering just below the boiling point finally erupted.

But this wasn't just an illusion.

It was a memory.

" _You can't talk to me like that, Stanford!"_ Filbrick had roared. _"I am your father and if you've got any sense in that brain of yours, you'll do what's right for this family!"_

And Ford had screamed back _"You HYPOCRITE! You lying, cheating, bone-gnawing_ _ **vulture**_ _! You wouldn't know the first thing about what's right or good for the family! You wouldn't know the first thing about family integrity if it stabbed you in the face and left you bleeding out in the gutter! After what you did to Stanley-"_

" _I told you before, do not mention that little shit-"_

" _Don't you dare talk about him like that – don't you dare-"_

" _Stanford, you_ _ **will**_ _do as I say: I gave you leeway to study what you wanted, I didn't complain when you decided to study mysteries instead of doing something profitable, and now it's time you repaid the debt."_

" _Oh that's right, you're not even pretending that we're a family anymore, not really: we're just a business. So instead of me lending you a few thousand of my own money, you want me to steal a few hundred thousand in grant money – in_ perfectly traceable government money _. After all the hell you gave Stanley over that gambling scam-"_

" _I_ _ **told you-"**_

" _SHUT UP! After what you did to Stanley whenever he got caught gambling or causing trouble, after all that fine upstanding talk you gave me about being a good, law-abiding citizen and keeping my nose clean no matter what, YOU WANT ME TO_ _ **STEAL**_ _FOR YOU! And while we're on the subject, don't even pretend this is about what's good for the family – this is about your goddamn retirement plan!"_

" _Stanford, you stop this_ **right now.** _You'll do as I say or you'll see just what it's like to be alone in this world: you'll get no support from me from now on – nothing!"_

" _Oh, so that's how it is, huh? The moment your "golden boy" stops being convenient, you'll just kick me aside like you did to Stanley. You think I need you anymore, you delusional old fart? You really think I give a maggoty shit what you think?! You hateful, bitter, deceitful old bastard, I should have stood up for Stanley that night! I should have gone with him! Anything would have been better than listening to your BULLSHIT!"_

And with that, Ford had hung up. But the memory wasn't over yet:

" _You see what I mean, Fordsie?"_ Bill had purred inside his mind. _"They just don't appreciate you the way I do. They'll never understand your genius. You know you can't trust_ any _of them: not Stanley, not Fiddleford, not even your greedy old bastard of a dad."_

And Stanford – naïve, paranoid and so very, very _blind_ – had nodded and muttered _"Trust no-one. Trust no-one."_

" _No-one except_ _ **ME,**_ _"_ Bill had giggled.

And once again, Ford had only nodded, secure in the knowledge that his muse would never betray him.

Thirty years onwards, Ford looked back on the memory of that argument and its aftermath with an almost crippling sense of regret – and not just because it was the last time he'd spoken to his father before the plunge into the portal.

It was because he'd been _so close_ to reaching an epiphany, about Bill, about himself, and most importantly, about Stan; he'd been within inches of honestly and truly forgiving Stanley for everything – of tracking him down and asking him to come to Gravity Falls because on some level he knew that he was over his head, because he needed someone who he could trust, someone he _wasn't_ in the process of driving away through obsession and obliviousness.

If he'd acted right then, he could have averted Weirdmageddon and saved them all: the portal would have been dismantled, Fiddleford wouldn't have lost his mind, Stanley wouldn't have been murdered, Dipper wouldn't have had to endure possession and worse at the hands of Bill, and billions of people would have been able to go on living.

But all Bill had needed to do was whisper in his ear and make a few honeyed appeals to his vanity, and the reality of the situation had gone trickling through Ford's grasp like so much dust. He'd shrugged off the incident as if it had never happened, forced it into a dark corner of his mind and refused to commit any of it to paper – his one moment of clarity consigned to the scrapheap.

He could have ignored Bill: he could have shrugged off his compliments, abandoned the deal, and done his best to live with the world of uncertainty beyond their partnership.

But he hadn't.

He'd been afraid - of what Stanley might say, of what Fiddleford would think, of not seeing his work through to the end, of admitting just how frightened and out-of-his depth he really was, of being without his muse – because he'd spent so long relying on Bill for advice and reassurance that he _just didn't know what to do without him._ And because of his fear and pride, he'd doomed them all.

And that was why, when Ford finally awoke from the memory, he found himself back in the rotunda – his home, his punishment, his prison for all time.

* * *

Days went by – or at least they _appeared_ to: here in the subterranean realms, day and night were utterly indistinguishable, and without them, time became almost impossible to measure.

Throughout this "time," Ford kept himself as occupied as possible: he continued his escape attempts, he gathered fungi, he cut down trees, he roasted mushroom skewers, he built chairs and tables, he carved plates and crude goblets, he scrawled escape plans and designs for new inventions on the floor with charcoal, and he even took to building some of these designs. Sadly, without nails – or any other kind of metal – his inventions were somewhat limited to what he could carve in one piece or glue together with boiled fungus slop.

But it wasn't about creating something that could grant him escape from this place – though he always hoped his latest creation would help: it was about keeping himself busy.

Because if he wasn't busy, he'd get bored… and if he got bored, he'd be tempted to start _wishing._

As much as he desperately wanted something to read, as much as he wanted to find a way out, he knew it wouldn't be worth the price he'd have to pay as a result. He couldn't help anyone if he ended up as another one of Bill's Henchmaniacs: if he wanted to save Dipper, Mabel, Stan and Fiddleford, he'd have to remain _himself._ And if he wanted to remain himself _,_ he'd have to go without luxuries like reading and quick fixes: he'd have to arrange his own entertainment, and carry on the escape attempts with none of Bill's interference.

Sadly, his attempts to escape via the Labyrinth usually ended with him either being carried all the way back to the entrance by the bully-beast, or being forced back by a torrent of unpleasant memories, horrific visions and distressing sensory influx; for good measure, the disorientation was usually enough to make him lose his way and end up back at the entrance even when he was trying to soldier on. Even his efforts to defeat the monster with his makeshift weaponry didn't have much success: every time he took aim, his vision would immediately be crowded with enough phantasmal horrors to leave him effectively blind to the incoming target before it ensnared him.

For hours afterward, Ford would pace in silence around the heart of the rotunda, grappling with the urge to wish for something that could help him through the Labyrinth – a means of killing the bully-beast, a way of resisting the illusions, _anything,_ so long as it brought him a little closer to escaping and rescuing his family. In the end, he could never quite bring himself to utter the fateful words, and resolved to continue his mundane attempts at escape.

On the upside, his attempts at making wine from the mushrooms and cloying fruit that grew in the forest had been a roaring success, though resulting hooch tasted vile and left him belching deliriously to himself for hours on end. Needless to say, the hangover was nothing short of apocalyptic.

 _Goddammit, Rick,_ he thought. _It's been god only knows how many years since we've seen each other, and already I'm picking up your bad habits all over again. Where are you, you old bastard? I could do with another crazy antisocial genius in here. If nothing else, you could probably do something more entertaining with all this cave fungi. Wherever you are, Rick, I hope you're nowhere near this dimension. Even you don't deserve what Bill would do to you. Or your grandson for that matter._

 _Jesus Christ almighty, how long can I keep doing this?_

* * *

Days slowly transformed into weeks, and somehow, Ford avoided the temptation to wish away his troubles. The escape attempts grew more ambitious, the designs became ever more fanciful, and the booze soared to 100% proof.

Eventually, perhaps a month after he'd been imprisoned in the rotunda, Ford found himself awakening one day to find Bill hovering over him, his eyelid curled into an obnoxious smirk.

"Having fun yet?" he cackled. "The Henchmaniacs have got a little bet going just to see how long you'll last before you start cracking up. Amorphous Shape thinks you'll make it three months; Paci-Fire's given you five; 8-Ball's betting you'll try to kill yourself before you hit the four-month mark. They don't know you like I know you, though: you're already half-insane, Sixer, and you've been that way ever since you first set off for Gravity Falls."

He paused for effect.

"Why do you think we worked so well together?"

Ford said nothing. Even if he was in the mood to talk after so many weeks alone in the rotunda (which he wasn't), he wasn't going to give Bill the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him.

"Oh come on, Fordsie. You seriously think you're _sane?_ You think any rational human being would do the things you've done? Gaming with infinity-sided dice, setting your face on fire, sneaking into UFOs to steal parts, and trying to shoot Earth's new lord and master in the head – you think anyone sane _would try to kill god?_ Admit it, Sixer: you're halfway there, and you want to be helped the rest of the way."

 _In other word, you're bored with the waiting game already and you're trying to bait me into making a wish. If you think calling me insane's the most provocative thing you can throw in my face, you might want to rethink this little conversation._

"Still giving me the silent treatment, huh? You'll come around eventually, pal: you might think you're achieving some great moral victory by keeping yourself deprived, but the nights are long and boring out here on the outer reaches, and it's pretty hard to play martyr when you've run out of walls to talk to. You're not being a hero, you're just torturing yourself – but it's not as if that's anything new, is it? You've always been your own worst enemy. If you'd stayed by my side, you'd be the happiest man on the planet right now – immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing. But here you are, lying in the dust and hoping you'll find some way of saving a family that's – and let's be honest here – _really isn't worth your time."_

Without saying a word, Ford got to his feet, shrugged on his coat and began slowly marching towards the Labyrinth's entrance.

Unsurprisingly, Bill followed him.

"You can't run away from the truth, Sixer," he chortled. "Your brother's a nonentity at present, and even when he mattered, he was just another sponger. Shooting Star resented you for taking her brother away. And Pine Tree..." Bill's voice rose to a nails-on-a-chalkboard shriek of laughter, "The things I could tell you about what's been happening to him!"

Outwardly, Ford remained perfectly silent; inwardly, he imagined a giant mallet gently smashing the loudmouthed cornchip's brains to a pulp.

"In fact, why don't I give you the perfect snapshot of what's happened to your little apprentice…"

And then, just as Ford was turning around to tell Bill to ram his home truths where the sun didn't shine, something _materialized_ between the two of them, landing on the floor with a muffled _flop._ Curious, he picked it up, turning it over in his hands as he tried to figure out what relevance this strange object could have to Bill's point: it was a thin scrap of appeared to be leather, but of a shade and consistency he'd never encountered in ordinary cowskin; no bigger than a wallet and not much thicker than a playing card, it was smooth to the touch and a creamy-pale in colour, and so delicate that Ford had to wonder what kind of animal this hide had been taken from. Looking closer, he saw there was a patterned marking of some kind across its surface, a curiously familiar shape that looked uncannily like-

 _The Big Dipper._

Ford dropped the piece of leather as if it were on fire, heart hammering so violently he thought his ribcage might shatter under the onslaught.

 _Dipper's birthmark._

 _He flayed Dipper and took the skin as proof._

"That's right!" Bill sneered. "He's dead! Dead and flayed alive, and that little scrap of skin is all you'll ever see of him!"

Ford couldn't speak: horror had left his vocal cords trapped beneath permafrost. He could only stare at the tiny scrap of human leather now lying on the floor in front of him, his mind frantically struggling to get a grip on reality again.

 _You don't know he's really dead,_ his rational mind insisted. _He could be screwing with you again, playing with your perceptions of reality. And even if Dipper really is dead, Bill can easily just bring him back to life – in fact, he's guaranteed to: the chances of you being the only one he's torturing are nothing short of astronomical. Don't take the bait. Wait until you see if Dipper's alive or not. Stay calm. Stay sane. Don't wish._

But in that moment, Ford was deaf to rationality. All he could focus on was that tiny piece of flayed skin on the floor, and the tortures that must have led to its removal.

"Aw, what's wrong, Fordsie? No wishes to spare? No anger? No tears? That's okay: Ol' Pine Tree had plenty of tears to spare when I carved him up! You should have heard him – screaming, wailing, sobbing like a baby, begging for mercy all the time."

 _Shut up. Just shut up._

"I wish you'd been there… I mean, Pine Tree certainly did. What were his last words, again? Oh yes…"

Bill cleared his non-existent throat, and let out a mocking but terrifyingly accurate mimicry of Dipper's screams: "Uncle Ford! Help me! Save me! I don't wanna die!" He laughed obnoxiously. "Such a pity you couldn't-"

Ford didn't even recall moving: one second he was staring down at the grisly trophy on the floor in front of him, the next he was launching himself across the rotunda at Bill, screaming enraged and distinctly less-than-visionary threats at the top of his voice. For the briefest of instants, his outstretched hands brushed Bill's eyeball: for a fraction of a second, he _had_ the bastard – could have hurt him as badly as he'd hurt Dipper, could have made him suffer the way he'd made all the others suffer, and even though the rotten bastard was immortal, it would have been worth it to hear him scream. For perhaps a nanosecond, he saw Bill's eye widen in surprise and shock-

But then he was gone, and Ford was lying sprawled on the floor, alone again…

…except for the skin.

* * *

 _Why Icarus?_

After Bill's horrific display, Ford spent the next few days going to pieces. His failed escape attempts grew ever more desperate, his plans dissolved into frenzied scribbles, and the makeshift booze only grew more and more important to retaining day-to-day sanity.

As for the… _leather…_ Ford couldn't even bring himself to look at it, much less pick it up and throw it away: he just left it lying on the floor where he'd dropped it, trying his best to ignore it as the days went by.

For hours on end, he would pace the rotunda, trying to think of all the reasons why he shouldn't make a wish, and all the reasons he thought of grew steadily more hollow and token as time went on. Soon, all he could think of were all the things he _could_ wish for. Invariably, the only way he could stop himself from succumbing to temptation was by taking a shot of booze – or three – and then slumping to the ground in a drunken stupor to contemplate the universe through a thoroughly inebriated haze.

And one evening, a question that had been sitting in a gloomy corner of his psyche for decades on end slowly crept to the forefront of his booze-sodden brain:

W _hy Icarus?_

As a young man, classical mythology had been a common focus of his interests alongside mysteries and science fiction, and the story of Icarus' disastrous flight from Crete had managed to find a particular place in his psyche; however, it hadn't been until the construction of the portal that the tale had begun to spiral into thematic fascination. Most of it had never made it into his journals, in part because most of it was just daydreams and delusions scarcely worth mentioning; in fact, it might have gone completely unrecorded if Fiddleford hadn't happened to notice the winged figures that Ford had been scrawling on the walls in his sleep, and tried to use the story in an attempt to get through to him when-

Ford sighed, and downed his ninth shot of hooch. Now he knew how Fiddleford felt: he didn't want to remember anything of those terrible arguments, or the ghastly downfall that had followed. He didn't want to remember triumphantly writing _if Icarus could see me now,_ convinced he'd done something worthwhile.

But why had Icarus fascinated him?

Why had Ford gotten so fixated on the character when the only thing he was known for was a) failing to follow instructions and b) dying? In his daydreams, he swung wildly between envisioning himself as Icarus and outdoing him, but why had the idea gripped him so thoroughly?

Why not, for example, Daedalus?

Envisioning himself the legendary inventor should have been so much easier: after all, he'd created the wings in the first place; he'd had a hand in the creation of the Minotaur; he'd designed the labyrinth used to imprison the beast, and (in some versions of the story) aided Theseus in defeating the monster. He'd even survived the escape from Crete. So why not Daedalus?

The more Ford thought about it, the only answer that made sense was this: he was a sucker for doomed moral victors – or what he _believed_ to be doomed moral victors; Icarus had done what Daedalus had not dared to do, and even though it had killed him, he'd still died pushing back the boundaries of what was possible. The idea fascinated him beyond measure… perhaps because he'd dreamed of doing the same thing, because the idea of dying in the pursuit of scientific knowledge had seemed noble – even desirable.

God only knew he'd been grappling with the idea in the darker days of his research into Gravity Falls, when he'd hit that terrible dead end and had no further to go before Bill had replied to his summons. His failure to get any further had gnawed at him, left him crushed with despair and self-loathing so intense he couldn't even bring himself to write about it. Even after Bill had sunk his talons into him, the idea had only grown more fascinating– in part because Bill had been all too happy to encourage his self-destructive thoughts; in hindsight, it was obvious that the triangular trickster found the spiral into madness absurdly funny.

In one especially grim fantasy from around that time, Ford had imagined completing his great work, making a name for himself in the scientific community, and then... just vanishing.

The booze stirred up a few carefully-forgotten memories, and Ford recalled that one night alone in his lab, after almost fifty-three straight hours without sleep, he had found himself reasoning that fame might have its joys, but scientific stardom never lasted. Sooner or later, he'd have fallen from grace – into poverty, into failure, into disfavour, into compromise – and after that, he'd be nothing but an embarrassment, a freak, a scientific curiosity in and of himself. After all, all he needed to do was look at some of the titans of research and discovery to see how far one could fall:

Nikola Tesla died alone, impoverished and overshadowed, a laughingstock to all.

Alan Turing was branded a criminal and ended up committing suicide.

Antoine Lavoisier had fallen victim to the revolution, executed by a republic that "had no need of scientists."

Even the great Albert Einstein himself had fallen in his own terrible way: he'd sacrificed his principles to encourage the development of nuclear weaponry, a decision that he regretted for the rest of his life and spent his remaining years trying to make amends – amends that the powers that be had ignored.

Wouldn't it be so much better, he'd reasoned madly, to go out in a blaze of glory? Wouldn't it be worth it to at once outdo Icarus and meet the same fate?

Back in the present, Ford took another shot of hooch and groaned in disgust at his past stupidity. _Were you really that crazed by that time, Stanford?_ He asked himself. _Were you really considering suicide, or had being under Bill's thumb for so long just left you unable to recognize reality? Lord only knows you'd forgotten the thrill of discovery by then. You'd probably forgotten all the stories of scientists who_ didn't _meet unhappy ends as well._

He sighed. All things considered, his brain wasn't exactly the healthiest place in the world.

Still, romanticising Icarus at least made some sense.

After all, who in their right mind would want to be Daedalus?

Daedalus was a prick, a miserable old whore who'd cosy up to any dictator willing to provide him with patronage, and arguably his most famous creation had only been used in the propagation of human suffering and death. Besides, it wasn't as if he lived a happy life, was it? He was forced to flee his homeland, he'd been imprisoned by Minos, his son died in the escape from Crete… and of course, in the act that had forced him to leave Athens to begin with, he'd murdered his nephew-

Ford's heart froze inside his chest.

 _He'd murdered his nephew._

His eyes very slowly strayed to the dome above him, and the barely-visible fresco of Icarus falling from the sky. Almost robotically, his hand strayed to the flashlight in his pocket; flicking it on, he shone it up into the shadows obscuring the fresco, allowing the beam to reveal the punchline of Bill Cipher's sick little joke. Here was Icarus falling from on high, yes, but far above him was another winged figure – a man whose all-too familiar face had stared back at him from the mirror in loathing and disgust for far longer than he cared to remember.

 _So in the end, I am Daedalus after all._

Ford leaned back against the rotunda wall and burst out laughing; he laughed long and hard and mirthlessly until his throat was rasped raw by the force of his own demented guffawing, until his lungs threatened to burst.

And then, in the silence that followed, he started to cry.

Not long after, the screaming began, a long drawn-out procession of agonized wails from somewhere just beyond the reach of the Labyrinth entrance. Even from here, even with ten shots of rotgut quietly dissolving his brain cells, there was no mistaking Dipper's voice.

"Oh no no no no no no no no…"

Bill was torturing him again: he'd recorded Dipper's screams, had saved them up for the moment when Ford had discovered the punch line, and was now projecting them at him in a vast wave of agonizing sound.

"No, no, _please no…"_

Getting to his feet, Ford ran for the door, hoping against hope that he could escape the screaming. No such luck: even once he was out in the corridor and hurtling towards the crossroads, the mind-tenderizing noise still hammered down on him.

"Stop, stop, stop, I'll do anything…"

It was following him now, he was sure of it: it echoed down the passageways, it tore at his ears when he tried to find shelter from it in the forest, and seeking shelter beneath the lake didn't dampen the sound at all. On and on it went, an unrelenting barrage of screams and sobs assaulting him from all sides, pummelling him with such fury that he swore his ears bled.

"Leave me alone!"

In desperation, he ran for the Labyrinth, hoping to find some refuge from the stimuli there – if only because his senses would be so clouded with illusions he wouldn't be able to hear the screams. But for once, a massive iron gate barred the way, forcing Ford to return to the rotunda.

For twelve straight minutes, he stood in the rotunda, trying vainly to shut out the noise, but no matter how tightly he covered his ears, the sound refused to relent: it was being projected telepathically, he realized, beamed directly into his head without interfacing with any of his senses along the way. Even if he punctured his eardrums, he'd still hear it.

Eventually, his composure snapped.

"STOP IT!" he howled at last. "STOP IT NOW! STOP THE NOISE!"

And to his astonishment, the screaming abruptly fell silent.

Ford very slowly looked down, and realized that he was standing right under the dome – at the very place where Bill had told him to announce his wishes.

"…Whoops," he muttered.

And then the first surge of Weirdness tore into him.

* * *

Several hours later, Ford groaned and opened his eyes.

An entire universe of dazzling lights and colours beyond human comprehension stared back at him, blinding in intensity, searing his brain with its indescribable beauty and incomparable horror: multihued flames formed the shapes of columns and lintels and arches and domes and so much miraculous architecture, and ice danced in glassy prisms to form an exoskeleton of impenetrable matter around it. Beyond it, lightning crackled through infinity, infusing the flame-forged world and a million other worlds alike it with power beyond imagining: the power to form illusions, to shape probability, to extend time, to warp reality. And beyond the thundering storm, beyond the stars, beyond the vast glowing lights that were other realities, gargantuan shapes roamed the void between the myriad points of illumination like whales roaming the open ocean… and at the head of the swarm hovered a familiar triangular figure, laughing loud enough to ripple the fabric of the world around him.

Vision stinging from the intensity of the experience, Ford closed his eyes, wondering if he'd finally gone insane and started hallucinating. But when he opened them again, he found that the colours and lights had gone.

Confused, he focussed on the point on the ceiling he'd been staring at for the last few seconds – and suddenly the vision of coruscating lights reappeared before him. By now extremely curious, he concentrated on the spectacle once again, willing it away; then as soon as it vanished, he summoned it back with another flicker of concentration.

The wish he'd made had changed him, Ford realized, had altered his ability to perceive the world around him. He longer saw the world in the simple spectrum of the visible and tangible: now, with an effort of will, he could see the energies that oozed and pulsed beneath the surface of reality. He could see what might be other pocket realities created by Bill. He could even see Bill himself if focussed for long enough. And he could…

Ford's eyes widened.

He could _see_ Weirdness. He could see Bill's control over the world, he could see the strings the almighty puppeteer used to manipulate reality… but he couldn't grasp them. He couldn't control them.

Yet.

Suddenly alive with enthusiasm, he hurried over to the centre of the rotunda, ready to announce another wish, ready to infuse himself with another dose of the power and insight this place had given him…

And then he remembered: all this vision, all this wonder had only come about because he'd fallen into Bill's trap … and now by the changes the dome had made to his body, it was fully capable of luring him back into the jaws of the trap. Embarrassed and ashamed, he stumbled away, hastily smothering any further ripples of temptation as he did so.

And then he saw it – only a flickering, barely-visible phantasm to human eyes, but to Weirdness-vision, it was a beacon, a burning bush, a star blossoming in the gloom.

It was a letter.

Fearing that it might be another note from Bill, Ford briefly considered tearing it up. Eventually, however, curiosity won out over dread, and he unfolded the letter to read the hastily-scrawled message inside.

 _Dear Ford_ , it read.

 _You don't know me – you've never met me, but you've heard tell of me. Bill's keeping a tight leash on the rules of reality in your neck of the woods, and it's taking all the power I can safely exert just to stop this letter from vanishing, so please read quickly._

 _Do not let despair overtake you: remember that Bill is a liar, and remember that death is no obstacle to him. He will not do away with his playthings so readily, nor will he ever believe that they can overcome him – and in this lies his weakness._

 _Do not let Bill crush your spirit with visions of past failings or talk of how much the world hates you: you've made mistakes, yes, but it's not too late to make amends; Fiddleford forgave you, and so should you. You must remain resolute. Save those who have saved you before, but don't play at heroism: this is not a battle you can win alone. Share the burden, and you will be saved._

 _I can't help you immediately: thanks to Bill's tinkering, there are limits to my powers on this plane of reality, limits I cannot overcome without help. I can nudge things in your favour, but you have to be ready to take advantage of what little I can alter: there will be a door. Continue your attempts to escape; traverse the Labyrinth; endure the nightmares… and you will find absolution in a dream and allies in the "real." If it sounds like I'm talking in riddles, it's because I am – Bill is always watching, and I can't afford to give him too much information if he decides to take notice. So for now, you're on your own._

 _Be patient._

 _Be ready._

 _Be Weird._

 _Wishing you the best of luck._

 _Mr A_

And then the letter was gone, dissolving away into phantasmal shards of unreality.

Ford took a deep breath…

…then, almost on reflex, began the long slow march towards the waiting gates of the Labyrinth.

After all, what else was there to do?

* * *

A/N: Up next, Stanley's game!


	11. The Museum Of Past Regrets

A/N: Aaaaand we're back! Meant to post this earlier in the week, but it's cold and dry as hell down here and my hands haven't responded well to the change in the weather: suffice it to say that my knuckles now look like a PSA on the dangers of the Bucking Bronco vigor, and frankly hurt a lot... but despite the pain, I still had a lot of fun writing this - though it did get extremely dark and depressing, I will admit.

Fantasy Fan 223: Glad you liked the latest chapter and the mythological references - also, theories will be confirmed... (checks watch) next chapter.

ImpossibleJedi4: I must say, I'm pleasantly surprised that my work was able to inspire emotion other than horror - and that I've managed to aim for the feels as thoroughly as the canon material did. Hopefully, this chapter will do justice to Stan. Thanks again for the review.

Kraven the Hunter: Yeah, it's out of character, but that's kind of the point - this torture business happened right after the intro, back when Bill was still miffed out almost getting killed by Stan and Ford's last gambit. Suffice it to say he had a lot of anger to vent over his near-defeat, and as canon demonstrates, Bill gets very violent when he gets angry.

Northgalus2002: Rest assured, narratives will start being tied together very soon; there will be a resolution, of a sort... but it won't be an instant recovery. I know this sounds like teasing, but as much as I don't want to spoil, I don't want to leave questions unanswered either. Thanks again for the review!

Guest: Hey, I got the reference! I still haven't got my hands on the blacklight journal, but there've been enough tantalizing details circulating for me to get the reference. To answer your question, Bill is always watching - but there are limits to his vision: as the finale demonstrated, he's not omniscient in the real world, so he can't watch literally every scenario at once, so his attention drifts from one game to the next and to the next. When it looks like his newest game piece is going to break down and provide him with some more entertainment, he focuses his attention on the scenario. So, Mr A can only intervene and provide aid when Bill isn't paying too much attention. Bill's overconfident, but he's overconfident when it comes to the people he's conquered; forces from beyond his domain might just be enough to get Bill worried.

As for the question you asked about Filbrick and Ford's conversation, it happened in the later period of Ford's research, when Bill had really sunk his talons into Ford and trust was beginning to break down with everyone outside their partnership. The conversation went like this: Filbrick was overwhelmed by retirement plan greed and pestered Ford for money; Ford offered to lend him some cash out of his own pocket, but Filbrick wanted more, and suggested purloining it from a research grant - which, incidentally, would not only be highly illegal but extremely traceable; Ford tried to reason with Filbrick, but he only got more insistent; realizing the full scope of his father's greed, Ford lost his temper and eventually hung up in a rage. Anyway, glad you liked the chapter, and I hope this one proves up to standard. Thanks again!

Now, be warned, ladies and gents: this chapter contains Stangst. Lots and lots of Stangst... and some very dark themes. And some dark spins on canon events by extremely ill-intentioned observers. And more Stangst. And self-loathing. And even more Stangst. Seriously, be prepared to pity Stan more than you have ever pitied him before.

So, without further ado, the latest chapter: feel free to furnish me with your reviews, opinions, theories, tvtropes recommendations, critiques, corrections for the typos that creep in at 4 in the morning, commentaries and exclamations! Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: _Gravity Falls_ is still not mine, please don't be surprised.

* * *

Stan's return to consciousness was slow and unpleasant, the nerves in his spine firing painfully as he made the long, ponderous journey back to wakefulness.

He'd no idea where he was, and frankly, he was too tired to open his eyes and look. Exhaustion kept his eyes half-lidded, barely catching faint glimpses of the sunlight pouring down on him through the canopy of branches overhead, and the sound of wind whistling through the trees was too subtle to disturb his slumber.

He was dimly aware that he was lying on something rough and splintery, something that felt uncannily like a park bench, but he'd be damned if he could remember how he'd gotten there. Stan had spent far too many nights sleeping on benches for his own good, but that had been back in the bad old days before he'd arrived in Gravity Falls, those terrible times when even the most basic of scheming had fallen apart in his hands and a night at a flea-infested local motel was too expensive for his empty pockets. Those days were long past him.

The last clear memory in his groggy old brain was of an enormous stone room backdropped by an equally enormous set of crimson stained-glass windows; he didn't know what it meant, but he recalled that he'd been running a con of some kind, a very important con as far as he could tell, and Ford had been there, Dipper and Mabel, too. And…

He'd been shot.

Suddenly, Stan was wide awake, all the memories flooding back into his battered skull: he'd been trying to con Bill into entering his mind so that Ford could erase him with the memory gun, but Bill had gotten wise and blasted him in the chest, left him bleeding to death. Ford had been forced to let the one-eyed bastard into his mind, and then… well, everything had gone dark.

 _Am I dead?_

At long last, Stan opened his eyes.

Just as he'd suspected, he was lying on a park bench, warm sunlight streaming down on him through the trees; all around him, lush forest stretched as far as the eye could see, broken only by well-maintained park roads and long stretches of rolling grassland visible just beyond the trees – all of it totally uninhabited.

Looking down at himself, he realized that he wasn't dressed in Ford's trenchcoat and adventurer's duds anymore: he was back in his Mr Mystery suit and fez, plus his own mercifully uncracked glasses, minus the sash he'd worn in his brief stint of leadership over the survivors. He didn't _appear_ to be injured: the gaping hole in his chest was gone, and he didn't seem to have any difficulty moving his body, so his spine was intact again too; even the bruises he'd earned in his botched parachute drop into the Fearamid were gone.

 _Maybe I_ am _dead,_ he thought, eyeing the tranquil parkland around him. _Maybe this is heaven… or a really passive-aggressive hell. Or maybe this whole Weirdmageddon business was just a dream. I mean, it's not like anyone could have stopped Bill and saved the world, not with the way I screwed things up. But if everything that happened this week was a dream… where the hell am I?_

He cleared his throat. "Dipper?" he called. "Mabel? Ford? Is anyone there?"

No-one answered.

For twelve nerve-wracking seconds, the forest was silent except for the faint whisper of wind through the trees; and then, just as he was starting to think that he really was alone, Stan heard a sharp _snap_ of dry twigs from somewhere very close by. Heart hammering, he spun around, frantically scanning the surrounding trees for any signs of movement. Once again, however, there was nobody to be seen… and yet, he swore he could hear what sounded like muffled footsteps shuffling off into the distance, though he couldn't pinpoint precisely where.

 _Okay then, if you don't wanna show yourself, that's fine. I'll just have to look for you, then… and hope that you're not actually stalking me._

Shivering, Stan got to his feet and, after pausing to stretch extravagantly and work out a few kinks left in his back, began the long, slow march down the path leading into the nearest and biggest of the clearings, away from the shadows and thick undergrowth of the dense forest. As the pine trees slowly dwindled away and the ground-hugging shrubs gave way to rolling grassland, dazzling sunlight poured down on Stan, leaving him blinking furiously as his eyes struggled to adjust to the brightness.

But even when he'd finally recovered, the sight of the world beyond the forest still rocked him to his core: ever since Weirdmageddon had dawned in Gravity Falls, he'd seen only hellish crimson skies and multi-coloured bubbles of madness floating across the horizon, and the sight of sunshine – _real,_ undistorted sunshine in the cloudless azure skies above – left him reeling in astonishment. But even that was nothing compared to what he saw when his eyes finally strayed to the path ahead of him.

At the very centre of the clearing, at the very end of the path that he'd found himself on, a colossal stone building stood gleaming in the sunlight. Built from polished white marble, it towered over him by almost two hundred feet, its mountainous roof and sculpted façade overwhelming in every conceivable way – _so_ overwhelming that it took Stan almost a full minute to realize what the building reminded him of: this place was none other than the Mystery Shack.

Yes, the wooden exterior had been rebuilt in stone; yes, the collapsing porch had been replaced with a magnificent flight of stairs flanked by statues of armoured warriors and bordered by gargantuan columns; and yes, the rickety roof now looked like it had been borrowed from the Supreme Court building… but when all was said and done, the marble monument at the top of the stairs held the same basic shape as the Mystery Shack. There was even a marble replica of the old sign on the roof.

And at the front of the building, just ahead of the grand staircase, an imposing statue stood upon a plinth, a majestic, _heroic_ figure depicted almost as something out of legend, a figure that was…

…completely identical to himself.

Stan's brain instinctively went into denial mode: he couldn't have seen what he thought he'd seen; his cataracts were playing up again, or maybe it was a trick of the light; more likely the statue depicted Ford, or even more likely it depicted a complete stranger. But as he drew closer, he realized that it couldn't be anyone but him: it was dressed in the Mr Mystery suit and fez, held an eight-ball cane – it was even wearing his totally superfluous eyepatch under his glasses! And those hands weren't Ford's: no sign of sixth fingers on either one.

Looking incredulously up and down at the statue, Stan's eyes strayed to its plinth, and saw a large plaque decorating the face of the pedestal – and now there could be no doubts about the statue's identity.

IN HONOUR OF STANLEY PINES, the plaque proclaimed. THE HERO THAT EARTH DESERVED.

 _Hot Belgian waffles._

Blinking in astonishment, he looked again at the "Mystery Shack," and at long last saw the carved granite sign decorating the entrance: THE MUSEUM OF STANLEY PINES, it read.

 _Am I in heaven after all?_

And then, just as Stanley was getting ready to sit down on the staircase to catch his breath and process everything he'd just seen, he heard the sound of footsteps creeping down the path towards him; on instinct, he spun around at whiplash speed – but once again, there was no-one in sight.

 _Okay… either you've got some kind of trapdoor in the path, or you're invisible. And now I know for a fact that you're stalking me… and you're probably not inclined to answer me if I ask why, but I'm sure it can't mean anything good for me. No time to stop and get my wind back, then…_

Turning around, he hurried up the stairs towards the museum's gigantic double doors. To his immense relief, they were unlocked and swung obligingly open before him; hurrying inside, he slammed the doors shut behind him, and bolted them closed for good measure. Only once he was absolutely sure that the doors were well and truly impregnable did he finally turn around to see the museum foyer.

Here, the similarities to the Mystery Shack ended quite abruptly: a vast white hall stretched off into the distance, gleaming vividly under the skylights in the vaulted ceiling, too wide and too massive to ever be confused with the old tourist trap's legendarily cluttered lobby. Stanley hadn't visited too many non-tourist trap museums in his lifetime, but this place seemed to fit the bill for a proper museum concourse: grandiose architecture, ridiculously oversized front desks, kiosks stacked with brochures and maps, velvet rope, red carpet, dozens of doorways and staircases and branching paths leading off into god only knew where… there was even a gift shop to the left of the front doors, almost identical to the Mystery Shack's own humble shop.

Once again, however, this particular museum was a monument to Stan Pines, and the creators hadn't been willing to let the guests forget about it _at all_ : every single banner dangling from the ceiling was emblazoned with Stan's grinning face. Every spare patch of wall was occupied by a statue of himself, each one depicting him in some heroic pose – standing astride a defeated dinosaur, ready for a brawl with knuckledustered fists raised, or standing at the pulpit in his election garb. Every product available in the gift shop was Stan Pines-themed, from replicas of the Mister Mystery suit to Stan Pines action figures ("now with real zombie-punching action!"), from board games of his life to autographed copies of his memoires. And just on the edge of his hearing, Stan could just make out the faint echo of a soft dulcet voice being played over the museum's PA system, welcoming visitors to the museum – or as the voice called it, "our tribute to the life and works of Stanley Pines, the hero that Earth deserved."

 _Seriously, am I in heaven?_

Stan paused, and looked out across the foyer once again.

 _I get the feeling heaven would have more people,_ he amended.

Even from here, it was pretty obvious that the place was completely deserted: the desks were unmanned, no queues had formed, the shop was barren of customers, and no security guards stood watch. Plus, Stan had already seen that there were no guests outside waiting to enter, and judging by the unearthly silence, there wasn't much going on in the other wings of the museum. Nor were there any signs of visitation: there were no scuffmarks on the floor, no wads trodden gum, no dust or dirt, no cluttered workstations behind the desks, nothing whatsoever to indicate the presence of human life on the premises. Either the janitors had just finished polishing the place up… or this museum had never seen visitors of any kind before today.

 _What if Bill's behind this?_ Stan wondered to himself. _What if he's put me inside a Prison Bubble just like he did with Mabel? What if all this was set up to keep me from causing trouble?_

For several minutes, he stood there, silently mulling over the theory: it _seemed_ possible, but once again, the lack of people was a major stumbling point. If this really was a private paradise set up to keep him from breaking out and becoming a nuisance to Bill, then where were the adoring crowds? Where were the bowing employees? Where were the gladhanding officials?

Where were Dipper and Mabel and Ford?

 _And come to think of it, where are they_ in the real world? _What's Bill done with them… and what's he_ going _to do with them?_

Only one thing was certain: he couldn't afford to get sidetracked by whatever this place was. If the others were in danger, he needed to find a way out of here and rescue them somehow… and if this really was a Prison Bubble, all he needed to do was to refuse the paradise that was on offer.

"Alright," he said loudly. "Fun's over. I appreciate the praise, but I gotta get outta here. So, you just show me an exit and I'll be on my way."

Silence.

"Hello? I'm done here, in case you hadn't noticed! I want out!"

Still nothing.

 _Okay, so it's not going to be that easy. Probably not just a Prison Bubble, then. Ah well, as long as I'm stuck here, I might as well have a look around; besides, I've got to find a way out anyway…_

So, pausing only to purloin a map from one of the abandoned kiosks, he set off up the nearest flight of stairs and through a passageway leading him towards the first exhibit:

THE LIFE OF STANLEY PINES.

* * *

As he passed under the welcoming banner and the archway, Stan found himself in a long, winding corridor lined with illuminated displays, each stretch of hallway marked with a sign marking the exact year this exhibit explored.

To his right, the display cases stood against the walls in well-maintained ranks, each one occupied with an artefact from Stan's past – most of which he hadn't seen since he'd left Glass Shard Beach: favourite t-shirts, childhood toys, his boxing gloves, the one trophy he'd earned in his entire scholastic career, and even the first tooth he'd lost.

But to his left, the walls were dominated by life-size dioramas of Stan's life, every single motionless figure depicted in photorealistic detail, every single event replicated just as it had been in life – right down to the dirt on the windowpanes. Here were his boyhood adventures with Ford; here were his early pranking triumphs; here were the long hours they'd poured into working on the Stan O'War (complete with a display case containing the splintered remains of the _real_ Stan O'War); here were family outings with Ma; here were lectures from Dad; here were Stan's first romances; here was Carla McCorkle; every notable moment of his life was on display, complete with lengthy information plaques to the left of each one.

And though Stan was once again almost overwhelmed by flattery, there was already a tiny knot of dread forming in the pit of his stomach: he knew that things wouldn't stay happy forever, not if this exhibit followed his life story to the letter. But he had to continue: if there was an exit hidden somewhere around here, he had to find it – for his own sake and the sake of everyone else who Bill had imprisoned. Dipper and Mabel were depending on him. So, he forced himself to continue on in spite of himself, gritting his teeth and bracing himself in preparation for the inevitable moment when his life went horribly wrong.

Sure enough, two corners later, the West Coast Tech debacle loomed out of the gloom: this particular event had no less than _four_ dioramas devoted to it, depicting the initial discovery in the principal's office, the last friendly discussion between him and Ford, the accidental breakage of Ford's machine, and that final confrontation when Dad had thrown him out of the house. And each one depicted the very worst moment in the entire moment, the pinnacle of Stan's shock, fear, mortification and despair: Stan sitting in silence, listening in disbelief as the principal dismissed him as a loser; the precise moment on the swings when Stan realized that Ford was already slipping away; the machine lying on the floor, quite clearly broken, Stan standing over it with a look of mingled fear and shame; and last but not least, Stan lying on the doorstep, watching helplessly as Ford vanished behind the curtains and the front door slammed shut.

The display cases were no less ghastly: brochures for West Coast Tech, the dented remains of Ford's perpetual motion machine, and a charred tangle of debris that turned out to be the remains of Stan's personal possessions; according to the plaque, Dad had burned any of his belongings left in the house not long after he'd thrown Stan out.

A brightly-coloured control panel to the right of the diorama drew Stan's attention. _"NEW FEATURE!"_ the sign proclaimed. _"Press the buttons to hear their thoughts! Learn secrets known only to them!"_

For several seconds, his hand lingered above the button marked "Stanley," but eventually, he thought better of it; after all, he already knew what he'd been thinking that night. So, despite the clamouring protests of his own instincts, Stan reached out and pressed the button marked "Filbrick."

Instantly, Dad's pre-recorded voice hissed from loudspeakers above the diorama: "I should have drowned him the day he was born," he snarled furiously. "This is what I get for keeping the spare around: shame and misfortune and one lost opportunity after another. Still, at least this'll keep him away: with a little luck, the gullible little shit might actually believe all that business about a fortune; he'll try – and he'll either end up dead or in jail. One way or another, he's not my problem anymore."

For a moment, Stan could only gape in horror, heart thudding leadenly in his chest as the implications of what Dad had just said trickled into place. Was this real? Had Dad _actually_ thought this, or was it just something that Bill (or whoever had built this place) had conjured up to hurt him? Had Filbrick never cared? Had Stan really spent ten years on a snipe hunt, just so Dad could keep him out of the way? And what about…

Stan paused, furiously blinking away tears. He should keep moving; he should move on, ignore the displays, stop torturing himself and _find a way out of here._ This exhibit would bring him nothing but pain. But common sense wasn't calling the shots: morbid curiosity was in charge now, pressing buttons and hammering switches as if there was no tomorrow.

Entirely of its own accord, his hand strayed to the button marked "Stanford."

And now Ford's voice issued from the speakers, hurt and angry and… _disbelieving._ "I thought I could trust you," he whispered. "I thought you were the only one who wouldn't… I thought you'd be happy for me – that we could still be friends! _I thought I could trust you!_ I… I thought you were different than the others." There was a pause, as if Ford was considering something. "Is this how it's going to be from now on?" he asked. "Can I trust _anyone?"_

 _Move on, dammit,_ Stan told himself. _Stop listening to it; the more you listen, the more it'll hurt, and the more it hurts, the longer you'll stay. Move on and hate yourself later._

So, forcing himself into motion, he marched onwards down the corridor, trying not to look at the next dioramas through blurring eyes but failing, failing with every single step he took. The next ten years of his life were here, every single moment of failure and humiliation vying for attention, from the cons that led to him being banned from New Jersey to his stays in prison – gaudy commercials, angry mobs, violent debt collectors, arrests, confinement, beatings by both the guards and fellow inmates, and that vicious stabbing in the exercise yard.

All this, _plus_ the things he hadn't been able to admit to Dipper and Mabel: the times he spent sleeping in his car or huddled in alleyways, the humiliating things he'd done to stay alive, the hurried flights from whatever gang he'd ended up owing money to, the days when he'd gotten within seconds of calling Ford – only to chicken out and hang up at the last moment.

As if to rub salt into his wounds, the display cases now housed a plethora of embarrassing detritus from that lost decade: used shammies, rip-off band-aids, broken pitchforks, hastily-arranged disguises, losing lottery tickets, tattered sleeping bags, unwanted "souvenirs" from less-than friendly clients, copious arrest records, pounds and pounds of fake IDs… and of course, one prison shiv, clearly made from a chunk of metal railing and still stained with Stan's blood.

And then…

The portal. Ford, paranoid and half-insane from sleep-deprivation, swiftly floating away. Stan, battered and branded, watching helplessly. And in the display cases across from the diorama, what could be commemorating the event but the Journals?

The rest was a bit of a blur, the next thirty years seeming to breeze past in a matter of seconds; maybe Stan had just started running, knowing full well that he'd only end up suffering further if he stopped to look at them; or maybe Bill had spent less time on the happier moments, devoting the rest of the exhibit to his moments of depression and sorrow – of which there were a great many. Few, if any of the joyful points in his life after the portal stood out in any great detail, not even the day out at the lake, but dioramas like the loss of the Mystery Shack to Gideon, his disastrous reunion with Ford, his abortive political career and that final argument at the Fearamid all stood out in vivid detail.

One way or another, Stan found himself at the end of the exhibit, staring up at the final diorama: Stan lying on the floor of the Fearamid in a pool of blood, Ford trying desperately to keep him from slipping into unconsciousness, Dipper and Mabel looking on in grief, and Bill Cipher hovering over the whole grisly display, exalting over his victory.

The plaque was uniquely unflattering: _"In a desperate attempt to save the lives of his family and make amends for ruining the circle,"_ it read, _"Stanley Pines tried to lure Bill into his mind while disguised as Ford, trusting that his brother would then erase it. However, the con was too obvious, the self-sacrifice too predictable, and Bill realized the plan before it could be completed: thus, Stan was struck down, dooming all further attempts at assassination and ultimately condemning Earth to an eternity under Bill Cipher's rule. Thus ends the tale of Stan Pines, the hero Earth truly deserved."_

Too late, Stan realized that he'd just reached the punchline of Bill Cipher's sick little joke: all of this – the tribute to Stan, the flattery, the statues, the commemoration – all of it was just window dressing for the moment when Bill finally got to rub his nose in his last big screwup.

Not for the first time, Stan wondered if he really was in hell.

But…

He blinked: was he imagining things, or were the words on the plaque starting to change? Were his eyes starting to fail him, or had a sentence or two been altered?

 _Can't talk long,_ it read. _He's just about to start watching again. Don't say anything about what you saw here. He'll want you to give in, and he'll call in help from the innermost reaches to convince you. Don't give up. Help is closer than you think. There will be a dream: he'll reach out to you if you reach out to him. Stay strong, and don't give up – no matter how much it hurts. Wait for the dream._

 _From Mr A._

And then, without warning, the message was gone.

* * *

Up ahead, the corridor forked – the left path leading back to the foyer, the right leading into another exhibit, this one marked with a banner proclaiming "PATHS NOT TAKEN: AN EXPLORATION OF WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN."

In that moment, Stan knew he couldn't afford to go anywhere near the right-hand archway: he didn't need any more distractions, and he didn't need any more blows to his horribly bruised self-esteem; if this place was what he thought it was, the exhibit was nothing but a honey trap, a massive lure for his attention mixed with even more depression-conjuring details than the last one. Right now, what he needed to do was put his head down and find an exit, preferably in another wing of the museum, preferably one that didn't involve him wandering back out the museum to face down the invisible stalker. But curiosity once again pushed an override button somewhere, and Stan found himself drifting towards the PATHS NOT TAKEN archway.

Inside the darkened hallway, the diorama continued… but this time, they were much lengthier and far more detailed – and they showed things that had never happened in Stanley's lifetime.

More specifically, they showed things that _might_ have happened.

In one diorama, Stan had somehow kept his relationship with Carla McCorkle. With her, he was stable: with her encouragement, he began focussing on remedial studies to help lay the foundations for a career; with her support, he was even able to start his own business – legitimate and profitable; with her help, he was even able to make peace with Ford, and eventually draw him back from the precipice of madness when Bill's influence nearly drove him over the edge. One day, Stan proposed to Carla – and she accepted. They married, and eventually began a family of their own; their three children grew up happy, untroubled by past feuds, and were regularly doted upon by "Brainy Uncle Ford" and "Uncle Fidds" whenever they made the long journey from Oregon to New Jersey.

In another diorama, Stan never broke the perpetual motion machine. Indeed, he'd never gotten anywhere near it on that fateful night, unable to bring himself to look at it for fear of what he might do. Instead, he'd gotten completely hammered on cheap whiskey (courtesy of his first faked ID) and in a drunken fit of grief, confessed all his deepest anxieties to Ford. In his own awkward way, he'd comforted Stan and promised that he'd find a way to make things right. Less than a month after Ford was swept away to West Coast Tech, Stan received a letter from a mechanic offering him a job – a mechanic that just so happened to work at Ford's dream college; it turned out that Ford had spent most of his free time looking for ways to reunite the two of them, and had paid the mechanic a hefty stipend to take Stan on as an apprentice of sorts. At West Coast Tech, the two flourished: Ford the star pupil blossomed into an award-winning scientist, while Stan learned his trade and started a prosperous little business of his own – and as a result of being in such close proximity to "nerd central," couldn't help but learn a little of the sciences along the way. So, when Ford needed an experienced mechanical expert to help him investigate new and improbable phenomena occurring in the Pacific Ocean, he didn't have to look far.

And in another depiction of what might have been, the perpetual motion machine _had_ broken, but Stan had taken a different approach. Instead of simply fleeing into the night after being kicked out, he'd ambushed Ford before he'd left for Backupsmore; his brother hadn't been interested in listening, and the argument quickly spiralled into a fistfight – one that had only ended when the two combatants were too exhausted to continue. In the aftermath, the two had aired their grievances... and despite the odds, Ford gradually accepted the fact that the destruction of his machine had been an accident – an extremely stupid accident that Stan had compounded by not admitting to it, but just an accident. Thus reconciled, the two brothers remained in contact, each offering help when the other needed it the most; when Stan found himself homeless and broke, Ford found accommodation for him, paying for apartments and meals for as long as Stan needed until he could get back on his feet; when Ford suffered an apparent nervous breakdown over his failure to unravel Gravity Falls' deepest secrets, Stan soon arrived in town to comfort him. In this timeline, Ford never built the portal, never made contact with Bill, and never came within fifty yards of losing his sanity to him: he published his findings, made his name in the scientific community, made a comfortable life for himself in Gravity Falls, and stayed in contact with Stan – now running a prosperous business of his own not too far away.

There was even a variation on the day he'd first set eyes on the portal: here, pushed beyond the limits of his endurance by everything that had happened to him under Bill's "guidance," Ford had collapsed right in the middle of explaining himself. Bewildered, Stan had called an ambulance: after several nights of sleep, a course of antibiotics and a sedative to calm his nerves, Ford had been able to continue his explanation – this time with the benefit of lucidity. But when the time came for him to take the journal and leave, Stan refused once again – but for different reasons: he'd seen how weak and sickly Ford had been on the night he'd arrived, seen the self-inflicted wounds on his arms, seen how Ford had cried out in his sleep during the worst of his nightmares… and all these sights brought Stan's protective instincts rushing back to the forefront of his mind. This time, Stan insisted that he stay and help Ford; this time, the Pines twins took on Bill Cipher together.

There were more – _thousands_ more. Once again, Stan had to look away after a while, if only to spare himself the sense of regret and lost opportunity. But then, just as he was about to give up and leave entirely, he saw something glowing in the shadows just beyond the final diorama.

An exit sign – and beyond it, a long passageway leading off into the darkness.

Heart leaping, Stan started towards it, a newfound spring in his step-

-and then behind him, he heard the footsteps approaching, the same soft footfalls creeping down the hall towards him. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed that the corridor was empty, but even in the dim light, there was no mistaking those faint impressions on the carpeted floor: just as he'd expected, there was something _invisible_ pursuing him.

"You again?" Stan called out.

He hadn't expected anyone to answer him, but to his surprise, someone did.

"Yes," whispered an unearthly voice. "Me again. Does that surprise you, Stanley Pines? It shouldn't."

"Who are you?"

"Oh, you know who I am."

"I'll have to take your word for that, pal. A name would be real helpful about now."

"You act as if I'd need one: you'd know me no matter what label I took."

" _Fine_ ," Stan sighed, wearily. "Be like that. If you don't wanna give me your name, that's not my goddamn problem. Now, is there a reason I can't see you?"

"Little bit new to a physical body," said the voice. "Still getting the hang of… being present. Couldn't do so up until now – didn't even _need_ to, in point of fact: all I needed to do was whisper in your ear and watch you cower and weep. But times have changed: Bill's given me physical form, given me everything I need to meet you in the flesh. And now… you can _see me._ "

A few feet away, the air _shimmered_ like water as something barely visible and all-too insubstantial oozed into corporeal existence: at first, it was merely a vague blur drifting across the gloom, but it gradually gained definition, manifesting a shape, arms and legs… but even once it stood before Stan with its body well and truly defined, it appeared shrouded with lines of grainy white static, its face hidden behind a dense layer of random dot pixel pattern.

"You're one of Bill's flunkies, then?" Stanley asked, unable to keep the apprehension from his voice.

"No. He did me the favour of granting me corporeal existence, but I don't take orders from him. If anything, I'm one of _your_ flunkies, Stan."

"And we've met before?"

"Many times."

"I think I'd remember seeing – or hearing – someone like you, whoever the hell you are."

"Give it a little thought, Stanley, and you'll remember me… but maybe not. Thinking's never been your strong suit, has it?"

Stan sighed. _Great,_ he thought irritably. _More personal abuse._

"You said it, not me," he replied aloud. "So, what do you want? Why have you been following me?"

The static-fogged apparition laughed scratchily. "I've been following you your entire life, Stanley, ever since the day you realized that your dear old dad would never treasure you as deeply as Stanford."

"…what."

"I was sitting with you in the corridor when you overheard the principal dismiss you as a failure. I was watching when your precious brotherly bond with Stanford shattered and Filbrick Pines threw you out of the house. When you left Glass Shard Beach, I haunted your footsteps through every single state you were banned from, from New Jersey to Pennsylvania; I even followed you to Colombia… and when Tiego shanked you in the guts and left you clinging to life in the prison hospital, I sat by your bedside and whispered all the awful truths you couldn't bear to hear."

"Who-"

"And when the last of your schemes fell apart, when you couldn't leave your motel room for fear of the debt collectors, I was the only company you could keep. And what about that first night in the Shack, the first twenty-four hours after you shoved Ford into the portal? Who do you think was there to break the silence, to give a voice to your fear and despair? Don't you remember the conversations we had that lonely winter, the thoughts I helped cross your mind in the darkness?"

The figure chortled hideously. "I was there with you for every day of the next thirty years, and let me tell you, this summer's been a _blast._ That depressing day out at the lake before Dipper and Mabel finally took pity on you; that drunken roleplaying business with the wax replica; your first big argument with Mabel; the moment when Gideon stole the Mystery Shack and took all your chances of rescuing Ford with it; the point when Dipper stopped trusting you… oh, and who could forget that first punch to the face from Ford after three decades of separation? And your little election gaffe pileup with the mind-control tie? Classic. I'm not even covering all those times when you realized you'd die alone and unmourned, when you feared that you'd helped start Weirdmageddon, or when the consequences of your little feud with Ford came crashing down on your thick skull."

Stan's eyes narrowed. "Who are you?" he hissed. _"Really?_ No more games, whoever the hell you are: show me your face!"

"Careful what you wish for, Mr Mystery…"

The man straightened, and then the static shrouding its body drew aside like a curtain – and in that moment, Stan felt his heart freeze inside his ribcage as he finally recognized the stranger.

He was an imposing figure, and always had been; even when his sons had grown tall enough to stand eye-to-eye with him, he'd still somehow managed to tower over them: a burly, heavyset figure, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, with gorilla-like arms terminating in huge, shovel-shaped hands. His clothes were slightly different – after all, Stan couldn't recall him ever wearing a _black_ jacket – but other than that, the ensemble was the same as always: the neatly-buttoned blue shirt, the perfectly-straight white tie, the crisply-ironed pants, the fedora and the inscrutable black shades. Under the brim of his hat, a heavy, cinderblock-shaped face glared out at the world, unsmiling, cleft-chinned, lantern-jawed and rough as sandpaper – a stoic face, a grim face, the face of a man who had seen everything the world had to offer and wasn't at all impressed.

But then, Filbrick Pines hadn't even been impressed with his own children until West Coast Tech had come knocking.

" _Dad?"_ Stan whispered incredulously.

The thing that couldn't possibly be Filbrick Pines grinned horribly; those harsh New Jersey features had never been made for anything other than vaguely-approving nods and the rare half-smile, and the sight of a full-blown grin gracing that face looked unspeakably _wrong._

"B-b-but…." Stan shook his head, trying vainly to process all the thoughts rushing into his already over-cluttered brain. "But you're dead!" he exploded. "You've been dead for ten years – I went to your funeral for Christ's sake! How the hell can you be here?!"

"Guess again, Stan," the monster sneered, in a voice that sounded at once exactly like Filbrick Pines but nothing like him at all. "You know better than anyone else that faces can't be trusted. Identities can be faked. You already know who I _really_ am: you just don't want to admit it. I'm something you've known far longer than your dear old dad, something more basic to you as a person, something you've never been able to get rid of – no matter how much money you hoarded, no matter how much time you spent with your niece and nephew, no matter how many years you spent trying to get Ford back. I'm a part of your mind, Stan. I'm all your hidden anxieties, all your fears, all your despair personified.

"Who else could I be but your **Self-Loathing?"**

Stan hesitated.

"That… actually makes a lot of sense," he conceded.

"Glad I have your approval," said Self-Loathing, completely deadpan.

"It's just… I didn't expect you to be wearing… dad's face, that's all. I'd have thought you'd look like-"

"Ford? I could have taken that form, yes. But…"

Without warning, Self-Loathing's body warped and folded in on itself, his skin distorted by lines of eye-searing grey static; when the interference finally cleared, he had changed, and now looked back at Stan with Ford's near-identical features, now twisted with the same deranged, sleepless paranoia he'd seen at the shack's front door thirty years ago. "It's not enough," Self-Loathing continued, now with Ford's voice. "The falling-out, the fighting, the jealousy, the guilt… it ate away at your self-esteem, but there's limits to what this face can do. You could still defend yourself against him, even make peace with him for a time. As for the other faces I could have picked…"

Another blast of static, and Self-Loathing was Dipper, his expression stamped with the same look of mingled fear and anger he'd worn just before the portal had opened. "Those arguments stung, and the distrust hurt even more," he said. "And after all the time you spent with him, all the time you wasted trying to help him toughen up, the fact that that he preferred Ford to you really cut deep, didn't it? But you could still look him in the eye without faltering in guilt, so I couldn't pick _his_ face."

His form changed again, and now he was Mabel, dispirited and all but crushed with despair – just as she'd been on the afternoon right before Weirdmageddon had begun. "Just looking at this face made you feel helpless towards the end," Self-Loathing whispered. "You could see history repeating itself: you could see Dipper and Mabel slowly drifting apart, and you could see a mistake just waiting to happen… but you didn't know what to do. And at times, you worried that Mabel resented you for bringing Ford into their lives, for helping drive a wedge between her and Dipper. But it still wasn't enough, so no joy there."

All of a sudden, Self-Loathing was Filbrick Pines again. "Your daddy's face? Oh, that was a face you could never bring yourself to answer back to. That was a face you were afraid of: his criticism wounded you more deeply than anything other condemnation you earned in your entire life, because even on the few times you could bring yourself to answer back it never felt like a victory, because _you knew he was right about you_. You couldn't even put your heart into your one big moment of defiance: you didn't bother to shout until you had a closed door, an entire street and a car between the two of you. And after being disowned, you couldn't hate him, couldn't even admit that you'd only been a fifth wheel in his eyes. So here I am, in the one face you couldn't stop fearing, speaking with the one voice you couldn't ignore."

Stan cringed. As much as he hated to admit it, Self-Loathing was right in just about everything he'd said: he'd been afraid of the old man even after he'd taken on Ford's identity, so afraid that he couldn't even bring himself to visit him in person. In hindsight, it was a relief that he'd never bothered calling the shack once Stan took over… but it had also meant that those last words he'd hollered over his shoulder as he left the neighbourhood had been the last words he'd said to Filbrick before his death.

Then again, even if he'd somehow been able to drive all that out of his head – which he couldn't – Self-Loathing's voice actively _hurt_ to listen to: quite apart from the fact that Self-Loathing was saying things with a frequency and verbosity that the real Filbrick Pines would never have used, there was something intrinsically wrong in the monster's voice, some unearthly, nerve-lacerating tone apparent in every single syllable, audible even over the flimsy disguise of Dad's voice.

"Well, you're here," Stan said, trying desperately to hide the nervous tremor in his voice. "What do you want with me? I mean, if you're gonna tell me how stupid I am, you're not saying anything I haven't heard before."

"I'm here to help you."

"Yeah, after everything you said, there's no way in hell I'm buying that. Have a good one."

And without another word, he turned on his heel and made a beeline in the opposite direction. A moment later, however, Self-Loathing was hovering in front of him, Filbrick's stolen face contorted with rage.

"I'M HERE TO TEACH YOU TO STOP RUNNING," he roared.

"Okay, okay, no need to shout, pal. Jeez. I've already stopped running from you, anyway, so-"

Self-Loathing howled with laughter, an unearthly cackle that sounded all the weirder for having emerged from Filbrick Pines' mouth. "You've never stopped running, Stan. That's all you ever do: when the going gets tough, your first instinct's to run for cover with your tail between your legs, and wait until the storm passes – or someone kicks you out into the middle of it. I mean, all that business about toughening Dipper up? "So when the world fights, he'll fight back?" Funniest thing in the world, coming from a self-absorbed coward like you."

And even with every other thought in his head agreeing with the monster, a few vague dregs of self-respect flared in the back of Stan's mind, just enough to get him to answer back in spite of himself. "You're talking to someone who's fought dinosaurs and punched out zombies, in case you forgot."

"Only because you had no other choice: you would never have gotten anywhere near the dinosaurs if it hadn't been for Dipper and Mabel, and the zombies came right to your door. You can act when you're out of options, but when you have a choice between flight or fight, you're out the door and over the hills before you have time to think about it. You run. You hide. You give up. And you've been doing it for a very long time. Let's just see if we can't jog your memory."

"Let's not and say we did."

"Remember that science fair?" Self-Loathing continued loudly. "Remember Ford's machine? Deep down, you knew you'd wrecked it, but you were too scared of the consequences to make amends. You could have been brave enough to admit the truth to him; maybe, if you'd have been quick enough to call him, the two of you could have fixed the machine and made everything right: Ford would be at his dream college and you would still be the best of friends even with all that distance between the two of you. Instead, you just threw a tarp over your handiwork and hoped for the best – because you thought it might work out if you just turned a blind eye to your own mistake. Deep down, no matter how much you cared for your brother, in that moment _you wanted him to fail."_

"But I-"

"Oh come on, Stanley. You honestly think you'd have been wearing that stupid grin if you were really sorry for what happened? Do you think the first words out of your mouth would have been "maybe there's a silver lining?" You could have been brave, you could have manned up and admitted to your stupidity in full, you could have apologised… but you were too busy hiding behind all those childish fantasies."

Self-Loathing's face warped again, and suddenly he was Stanley himself. "Hey Ford!" he hollered in Stan's voice, the rendition just off enough to sound mocking. "I just made you look like an idiot in public, wrecked your chances of getting into your dream college and ruined all your hopes of validation as a human being, but let's go _treasure hunting!_ Durr hurr hurr! _"_

Another flicker of static, and he was Filbrick again. "That's you," he sneered. "That's exactly what you sound like. And let's not forget how you left the family home-"

"I'd already been kicked out! Dad already disowned me!"

"And you never once tried to force your way back. You saw those museum displays back there: you could have held your ground, you could have refused to leave. You could have appealed to your mom, maybe even gotten Ford to speak up for you if you were willing to go the distance just to convince him, even sunk to the level of a fist-fight with the old man if you were desperate enough. But you never tried: you gave up. You left. You set yourself an impossible task, because that was easier than facing the reality of the situation. That night ruined your life, Stan, but only because _you let it,_ because you were too much of a coward to confront your future head-on. And the next ten years were no different: so many years spent running from one failed con after another, never stopping to realize that your self-imposed mission would never be completed, never stopping to face the consequences, always making the same mistakes."

"Well it was either that or get arrested! And besides, if you're going to go after me for all those cons, I was doing what I had to do to-"

"Survive? Become a millionaire? Impress Filbrick the unimpressible? Nobody ever _ordered_ you to be a con-artist, Stan. Nobody ever told you that a life of crime was the only way for you to make money. I mean, it took you – what? – a decade and a move to Gravity Falls for you to finally work up a decent technique, so it's obvious that you were a godawful conman. Then again, if you really wanted wealth, then you could have made fast money by selling drugs or peddling flesh… but you didn't want to hurt anyone, not really. So you were happy to live a life of mediocrity, wrapped up in dreams of all the millions you'd make for the family if you just had _that one perfect sale,_ never once daring to defy your own principals, never once daring to imagine asking for help."

"What, loans don't count?"

"Oh ho, ho, ho. Very funny. I'm sure that bit of humour was of great comfort when Rico broke that baseball bat over your head. You could have asked for _real_ help, Stan: you could have reached out to family, and they might very well have forgiven you if you'd put your back into it. Remember how many times you called Ford, how many times you came close to speaking to him and making things right? But you didn't want to take the chance of being rejected again: you were still too afraid of your own inadequacies. So you hung up and went right back to sleeping in your car and collecting lottery tickets… up until the time came to accuse Ford of being selfish, of course. Funny, all that talk about him hoarding money and you'd never had the balls to _ask_ for any of it."

Self-Loathing chortled hideously to himself. "Did you ever wonder what might have happened if you hadn't been such a coward? I'll bet you did… _once_. Were you still thinking about it when the debt collectors came knocking? When you went to prison? When you almost died? Somehow, I don't think so. I know your mind, Stan: facts go in through one ear and out the other. Remember those words Ford said to you that day?"

And as if by way of an answer, the entire museum echoed with the words Ford had shouted at him as they'd wrestled over the journal:

 _You ruined your own life!_

A ringing silence followed.

"What's wrong?" Self-Loathing sneered. "Nothing to say? Cat got your tongue? Or have you finally realized that I'm right about you – that I'm giving voice to everything you've thought to yourself in your darkest hours? But perhaps you'd like me to go on: we've got so much more ground to cover; we've got that winter you spent cooped up in the shack, too afraid to face the outside world; we've got all those years you hid from the rest of the family, pretending to be your brother – never facing your dear old mother and father except at funerals, because you couldn't bear the pain any other way. You couldn't even bring yourself to be honest with family member until they were in their graves. And all those lies you told to Dipper and Mabel... oh, you _wanted_ to tell them the truth, but you chickened out at the last minute. And let's not forget the end result of all that hard work and deception, where you spent thirty years trying to bring Ford back from the portal, and the moment he landed back in your life, you gave up on him again!"

"I know when I'm beaten," Stan snapped, a little more defensively than he'd have liked. "After he punched me in the face and told me he'd have me out on the street by the end of the summer, I got the message loud and clear."

"Aw, poor Stan Pines, so scared of confrontations. Too afraid to face his brother. Too timid to admit that he'd be homeless. So fearful of being _pitied._ Don't worry, Stan: you'll get no pity here. Only realizations. What next, I wonder? Oh, I know: how about the realization that Ford was better at being you than _you_ could ever be?"

"… _What?"_

"You wanted to play at being a mentor to Dipper, didn't you? You wanted to make him tougher, to fight back when reality fought him. But even he tired of the Filbrick Pines 2.0 treatment, and Dipper latched on to your brother in the hope that he'd provide the support that you couldn't… and _Ford_ had a lesson of his own to teach: "being a hero means fighting back even when it seems impossible." And guess what? When Weirdmageddon dawned, Ford practised what he preached, even though it all ended in tears… all while _you_ cowered in the Mystery Shack, lording it over the survivors, playing at being a chief and making plans for a future you couldn't possibly sustain. So tell me, whose lesson do you think Dipper had in mind when he rallied the other survivors to stop Bill? Was he listening to the brave but foolhardy genius who'd sacrificed his liberty and perhaps his _life_ to stop Bill… or was he listening to the hypocritical old coward who was too busy capitalizing on the disaster to care about the fate of humanity?"

Stan looked away; he didn't want Self-Loathing to see the expression on his face.

"It's a simple question with a simple answer, Stanley. Do you think those impressionable youngsters preferred "being a hero means fighting back even when it seems impossible," or do you think they preferred "we got a good thing here"? Do you think they ever _once_ imagined that your no-consequence not-my-problem survivalist bullshit was the right thing to do?" Self-Loathing paused for effect. "Or perhaps I should ask this: did you think your little house of cards would last? Would you have finally admitted that Dipper and Mabel were right once supplies started running low… or would you have carried on all the way through riots, through cannibalism, through one murder after the other?"

"You know I wouldn't," Stan snarled – barely able to disguise the tears.

"Oh, I know you wouldn't. Cowardice takes so many forms in that decomposing wreckage you call a personality. But in spite of all your flaws, Dipper and Mabel still cared about you, unbelievably enough. Shame, really. If they hadn't been so tolerant, they might still be in one piece… but that's the price they pay for being in the care of someone like you – you who had the future of the world in your hands and fumbled it. _Twice,"_ he added. "Once, because you couldn't be bothered to keep your personal problems to yourself until the circle was finished, and the second time because you were such a terrible con-artist. And because of you, Stan, the world died and took your family with it. All because of your stubbornness, your pride, your stupidity… and your cowardice."

Suddenly, Stan was in motion, running down the corridor as fast as his feet could carry him; he didn't know if this really was his way out or if this was just another trick, and frankly he couldn't have cared less. Then and there, all he cared about was getting away from Self-Loathing's unbearable voice: he couldn't bear another minute of his own self-hatred being beamed into his ears by those maddening whispers. But even as he sprinted away, he could already hear the sound of the footsteps pursuing him, the distinctive whisper of static as Self-Loathing followed him.

Already, Stan could hear monster's voice hissing in his ears, so close that he swore that Self-Loathing had to be right next to him – even though a quick glance behind him confirmed that he was alone in the corridor.

"Where are you going, Stan?" the voice rasped. "Do you actually think there's somewhere you can go where I won't find you? Do you think you can escape from a part of your own mind? I'm always there for you, Stanley; always at your shoulder… always at your throat. All the others, they'll desert you one day: they'll stop believing in you and they'll leave – or they'll realize too late that they placed their trust in the wrong man, and die waiting for you to save them… but I'll always be there for you."

Without warning, Self-Loathing abruptly flickered into view with a burst of static – right in front of Stan. Before he could react, before he could stop his forward momentum, the monster had already seized him by the collar and slammed him violently against the wall.

"You see? No matter how far you run or how well you hide yourself, I'll always find you. Whether I'm out here or in _there_ …" The monster reached out and tapped sharply on Stan's forehead with a static-shrouded finger. "…Or in a cell at the Fearamid or in the ruins of the Shack, you'll never be rid of me – not unless you accept the inevitable and take the option you should have taken a long, long time ago."

"And what option's that?" Stanley gasped.

By way of an answer, Self-Loathing wrenched him away from the wall and began hauling him bodily down the corridor, flinging him the remaining five feet: Stan caught a brief glimpse of a door marked by the long-awaited exit sign – before he hit it side on. Fortunately, the door immediately swung open on impact, depositing him roughly on the cold tiled floor on the opposite side.

But there was no escape waiting for him beyond the exit – only a small windowless room, flooded with shadows except for a tiny pool of light in its centre, empty except for a stone pedestal sitting right in the heart of the chamber. And as Stan hauled himself upright, he saw… the "option."

Hovering in mid-air just above the pedestal was a straight razor, unfolded and gleaming softly in the pale glow.

And of course, it wasn't just any blade: Stan remembered dad's old straight razor all too well, having been warned to handle it with the utmost care more times than he cared to recall. It had been inherited from Filbrick's father before him, a testament to the old man's stubborn refusal to make do with safety razors, and luxury that Filbrick had been too stubborn to sell or discard even in the hard times before his antiques business had opened… and in all honesty, it wasn't hard to see why: the handle was sterling silver and beautifully made, the blade so honed and sharp that Ford had joked that it could split atoms. Once, Stan had worked up the nerve to ask where grandpa had gotten his hands on a silver-plated razor, given how poor the family had been; Filbrick's only answer had been a curt grunt of "Ypres, 1918."

And now, here it lay, the old "cutthroat razor," as he and Ford had called it-

"Oh," said Stan, quietly.

"You knew this had to happen, Stan," Self-Loathing whispered. "This is your only way out: a brief slice across the wrists and a long fall into nothingness. The only alternative is an eternity spent here, in this tribute to your worthlessness as a human being, with me as the only company you'll ever get to keep… and I do mean an eternity by the way. Bill's seen to it that you won't die of old age here, and you won't die of starvation or hunger either – not while I'm around to force-feed you; he's made it so that you'll get to live a very, very long time with your cowardice if that's what you want."

"You want me to _kill myself?"_

"You're telling me you want to remain alive? After everything you've seen here, can you honestly tell me that yours is a life worth living: you've failed at almost everything you ever attempted, and your one notable success helped kickstart the end of the world; your parents died without ever realizing who you really were, your brother's been condemned to an eternity of pain, and your darling grandniece and grandnephew are either dead or worse-than-dead… and the world as you know it has been reduced to a museum that will never see any visitors except for you and I. Not because there's any shortage of human beings, mind you," Self-Loathing added. "It's just because nobody wants anything to do with you or your family – because by now, everyone out there knows who they can thank for causing the end of the world."

In spite of himself, Stan managed to rally a few embers of self-esteem – just enough to meet Self-Loathing's eyes as he responded. "You don't feel like _showing_ me any of that, do you?" he snarled. "How do I know you're not lying, pal? I mean, it doesn't take a good con artist to recognize a bad one."

"Of course not. But if I offer to show you the truth, you won't take it. You don't want to see what might have happened to Dipper and Mabel. You don't want to see their shattered little bodies. You don't want to imagine how much they screamed."

Inwardly, Stan just about managed a sneer of _Yeah, wiseguy, like you're the most honest person in the room._

Outwardly, he could only grit his teeth and half-snarl half-whimper the words "stop it."

"Shall I tell you how long it took for them to die? Do you want to hear what… _methods_ Bill used? I can give you hours of audio recordings, Stan, hours upon hours of compressed agony – and I can have it playing in every single room of this museum until you give up and accept the inevitable. I can even let you hear the exact moment when the two of them stopped screaming your name and started cursing it – and let's be honest, why wouldn't they? You brought this on them."

"…stop it…"

"Oh, you can't deny that, Stan. Ford might have given Bill a doorway into our reality, but you were the one who opened it. You were the one who made Weirdmageddon possible. You were the one who ruined the circle. And you were the one who failed them all and left Ford with the burden of saving your worthless life. And now all humanity suffers for your failure."

"I'll find another way out," Stan muttered – but even he couldn't hide the doubt and despair in his voice by now. "I'll find another way to escape, to stop Bill and save the others."

"What's wrong? Run out of brown meat at long last, Mr Chief? No more Gnomes to barbecue? Is it time for Stan Pines, wasteland chieftain, to get off his throne and mount a daring rescue? Whoops, too late for any of that, Stan: everyone's dead, dying, doomed or damned or some combination of the four, and there's nothing you can do to save them. In point of fact, there's nothing you can do to save yourself – nothing except running that straight-razor down your arms and letting your worthless blood piss out over the floor."

This time, Stan couldn't even bring himself to respond.

"So why delay the inevitable? You know what you have to do: lord only knows you've thought of doing it before, back when you were alone, impoverished and with nothing to look forward to but another visit from the debt collectors. You thought about rope and car exhausts and long falls and gaping exit wounds and cold lake water a thousand times, but you never could bring yourself to take the final step. This'll be so much cleaner, Stan: a tiny bit of pain across your wrists, some nice vertical slashes, and then a soft, gentle descent into oblivion. You'll be rid of me at last, and the world will be rid of you. Can you honestly say that's something you don't want?"

Stan hesitated.

Then, he reached out to take the razor from the pedestal.

"That's right, Stan. Just take it and be done with it. End it all."

His fingers closed around the razor's handle…

And then...

Maybe it was the message he'd received, maybe it was the last atom of the old Pines family stubbornness. One way or the other, Stan hesitated.

"You were right about me being a coward, by the way," he said quietly.

"Glad to hear it."

"And you were also right when you said I kept making the same mistakes."

"Very true."

In spite of himself, Stan smiled. "What's a few more between friends, huh?"

And with that, he turned and brought the straight razor hissing through the air in a deadly arc – right at Self-Loathing's face. The blade dug deep into the apparition's face, tearing through the not-quite-flesh and embedding itself deep in his left cheekbone.

As the monster roared in pain, hands flying to his face as he struggled to tear the blade free of his mangled features, Stan put his head down and ran – flinging the door open and launching himself down the corridor. He didn't know where he was going or what he expected to happen next, but he had to find an exit: he had to get out – to find Dipper, Mabel, Ford – to stop Bill, anything. He couldn't stay here forever, even if it didn't mean killing himself. He had to _do something._

If only he could figure out what.

* * *

Bill observed the unfolding drama with interest – and more than a little bit of amusement.

This game was turning out to be more intense than initially expected: when he'd first built the museum and plucked Self-Loathing from his place in Stan's mind, Bill had been expecting nothing more than a straightforward psychological assault on everything on the grotesque old man's will to live, compounded by a little effort from a personality trait given life - an appropriate element considering that Stan, like Ford, had always been his own worst enemy.

Once the museum exhibits and Self-Loathing had done their part in whittling away at Stan's survival instinct, he could then be induced to commit suicide.

And then, Bill could bring him back, alter his perceptions of reality to make him think that the whole thing had been nothing more than a nightmare, and then lead him back to the museum to start the whole thing all over again. The exhibits would once again push him to the brink of suicide, Self-Loathing would drive him over the edge, and Stan would end it all once again – only to wake up a few hours later, believing that the awful experience had been another bad dream… with perhaps a moment or two of deja-vu-induced clarity. Lather, rinse, and repeat, an endless cycle of inescapable torment that would only grow more excruciating for every moment Stan realized the full scope of the torture; a fitting punishment for someone who'd thought he was clever enough to pull the wool over Bill's eye.

But Stan was putting up more resistance than expected; maybe enough to require herding into the _nastier_ wings of the museum. And funnily enough, Self-Loathing was proving more aggressive than anyone had thought. Bill had known that the personality element had despised Stan with a passion - no surprises there - but even he hadn't expected Self-Loathing to go on the offensive as viciously as he had a moment ago: after all, there were supposed to be limits as to how much force a personified trait could exert. Perhaps he might even diverge from the game plan if pushed far enough… but maybe not.

From his position in the ether just above the museum, Bill watched as Self-Loathing finally tore the razor free from his skull with a howl of rage and threw it at the wall, and began following Stan back down the corridor.

He wasn't troubled by Stan's refusal, nor did Self-Loathing's aggression stir any concerns. The manifested personality trait would play by the rules, and no matter how many times he tried to shrug off his despair, Stan would succumb to the inevitable sooner or later.

And if he didn't…

So?

Bill had an eternity to wait, and a thousand more games to play in the meantime.

* * *

A/N: _Coming up next... uncharted territory._ OUR INTERMISSION HAS BEGUN! MILL ABOUT!


	12. Uninvited Guests

A/N: Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a very trying start to the month; I've been ill these past few weeks, and it's been difficult to concentrate on writing. Suffice to say I've still got appointments with the doctor to get through, but in the meantime, I'm playing catch-up; thus, this somewhat belated chapter.

 **Brenne** \- I'm glad you like the story so far; not sure if we should be happy that Bill has another worthy opponent, considering that Bill seems to enjoy torturing his worthy opponents even more viciously than others - mentally or physically. Hope this chapter stays up to standards!

 **Kraven the Hunter:** Suffice to say the original Pine Twins have got a lot of running to do before they outpace their demons, but in the meantime, I can definitely promise something Bill wasn't expecting in this chapter... and soon, some crossing paths!

 **Fantasy Fan 223:** Yeah, Filbrick tends to inspire those kinds of nicknames! I'm sorry I couldn't update sooner, and with any luck I'll be able to get some extra chapters up before long. I hope you enjoy this latest chapter!

 **Northgalus2002:** There will be some addressing of your last point in this very chapter, along with some intersection; I can't spoil too much at this stage, but I imagine that Robbie might be saved very easily... provided he can realize that he has a loophole of unimaginable power at his fingertips.

 **Guest:** It's not a pleasant fact to reflect on, but consider that if the museum has wings on what might have gone right in Stan's life, there might just be a wing or two discussing how things could have been so much worse - a means for Self-Loathing to dissect every single decision Stan made and show him how they could have gone horribly wrong if not for sheer dumb luck. Or worse still, a wing showing how everyone else on the planet is faring at present. And as for a thousand more games: technically, not all the Zodiac participants are through with their current games, but once they're through, they'll be put back in the toybox (so to speak) so that Bill can expand his games to include the rest of the human race. Oh, and thanks for spotting the error; typos have a habit of creeping up on me at 2 in the morning.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: feel free to furnish me with your theories, critiques, recommendations, commendations and corrections. Read, review, and above all enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls ain't mine. Also, there's several notable crossovers towards the end of the chapter; in the interests of avoiding spoilers, I can't reveal them here - but they're not mine either. For added fun, see if you get the references.

* * *

At some point along the road to Gravity Falls Dipper found himself huddled under a bridge, soaked to the skin and shivering pathetically as he wondered how long he'd been walking. Had it been a week? A month? Two months?

A _year?_

Time was almost impossible to measure out here. Much like reality itself, it moved in fits and starts, flowing like melting wax for one stretch of the journey and freezing hard as concrete the next. Sometimes, the blood-red sun remained fixed in the sky for what felt like eternity, never setting or budging; sometimes, Dipper found himself plunged into the moonless dark of perpetual midnight, immediately reducing to tripping over fallen logs and tumbling down hillsides until he finally found his way to the next region. And on some lonely stretches of wasteland, the sun rose and sank in moments, day and night blurring into an incomprehensible jumble of lights and shadows.

All Dipper knew was that he should have reached Gravity Falls by now: he'd recognized the usual landmarks he'd seen on the road leading up to the town, he'd even seen the beginnings of those distinctive woods in the distance, but somehow he never reached the town itself. Whenever he got close, the world in front of him shifted shifted, leaving him wandering across yet another collage of insane landscapes and madcap scenarios.

In the last few days, he'd travelled across spherical lakes floating a hundred feet above ground, forests of writhing tentacles sprouting from soil composed entirely of dead fish, ruined towns and cities transplanted from other countries, tremendous granite plateaus that eddied and rippled like water beneath his feet, marshlands quite literally alive with sapient mud and cloying arms of wet clay, vast bleak mountain ranges of ancient teeth that chattered and clicked with every step, rivers that flowed upwards into the sky and transformed into foul-smelling black bile that rained down upon vast living fields of conjoined human bodies that could only weep and tremble under the downpour, roads made of thousands upon thousands of parchment pages – each one inscribed with proclamation of Bill Cipher's glory, and dozens of other landscapes too complicated to describe.

And for every step of the journey, Dipper had been tired, cold, hungry, unwashed, bruised from head to toe, thoroughly lonely…

…and, of course, constantly transforming.

Every few minutes, he'd change shape, his body warping itself into a new and completely random form – sometimes useful for the job at hand, sometimes not: he'd been a lobster in the hovering lakes, he'd been a fish on dry land; he'd been a bird soaring over bottomless pits, he'd been a butterfly struggling to avoid a spider's web; he'd been a bicycle weaving down the ruined highway, he'd been a slug trying to cross a salt lake; he'd been a swirling cloud of mist pouring itself through a impassable barrier of grilles, he'd been an inflatable beach ball rolling through a pit of needles. Once, he'd even transformed into an anvil while trying to swim and sank straight to the bottom, only escaping when he'd finally shifted into the shape of an eel.

In the last few days, Dipper had been human, animal, mineral, vegetable and every little thing between, and by now, transforming didn't even hurt anymore. After his seventy-third shapeshift, Dipper's nerves just about switched off during transitions and left him almost completely numb to the sensation of skin turning inside out and bones twisting beneath his flesh. Nor did the weird business with clothes bother him all that much: once he was absolutely certain that his clothes would always reappear on him once he returned to human form, regardless of how badly they'd been damaged or how far away he'd lost them, his badly-bruised sense of dignity could finally rest easy. He didn't even mind the fact that there was nothing to eat but the bland lumps of gruel that Bill occasionally showered him with; after three days spent scavenging from garbage cans at the very beginning of Weirdmageddon, tasteless food was almost bearable – except of course for the days when Bill tried to surprise him with the starvation option.

No, what bothered him was the mental baggage.

The aftermath of his… _encounter_ with Pyronica had been nothing short of agonizing, and even though his next transformation immediately healed the bloody tear on his forehead, it didn't numb the pain: for hours afterwards, every single nerve in his skull was on fire, every sensation in his face indicating that Pyronica somehow still there and _still cutting him,_ to the point that Dipper couldn't sleep for the pain rippling through his bones. At times, it seemed so real that he had to run a hand along his face just make sure he wasn't bleeding. But once the physical pain had finally ebbed away, he soon found himself saddled with a fresh supply of fear, doubt and more than a little bit of frustration. Time and again, Dipper found himself lying awake at night, struggling with all the new thoughts rushing through his brain.

 _Why the hell did she need to take Pacifica's form?_ He'd wondered.

 _Why did she have to kiss me? It's bad enough that I still can't decide how I feel about Wendy, and now I'm confused about Pacifica as well!_

 _Still, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed seeing her again. I enjoyed the kiss. And I… well, I think I like her, but… I mean, if she'd been the_ real _Pacifica, it would have been okay, maybe, but… oh god, that's another nightmare to look forward to when I finally see the real Pacifica again and all I'll be able to think about is Pyronica cutting my forehead off._

If _I see Pacifica again._

 _If I see_ anyone _ever again._

 _No, no, no, don't think like that! Think positively! You've got to believe in yourself, otherwise… otherwise… oh lord, why do I have to keep thinking about this? Why can't I just sleep?_

Not that it was easy to sleep even without all his myriad anxieties.

Bill had been true to his word when it came to the rules of his little game: the moment Dipper stopped moving for more than a minute, the transformations stopped being random and started getting _really_ nasty. Once, he'd made the mistake of stopping to catch his breath after a long and arduous jog down a hillside of crumbling skeletons – and Bill had made his displeasure known immediately with the next transformation: he'd kept Dipper human this time, but aged him by almost two hundred years, leaving him a withered arthritic wreck with barely enough muscle strength to hobble over to the next region. By the time Bill had decided that he'd learned his lesson and finally returned him to normal, Dipper had broken both his legs after stumbling down the next hillside and been reduced to dragging himself painfully along the rough gravel path. And that had been one of the _gentler_ punishments: the next time, Bill had taken the reverse approach by regressing Dipper to infancy and having him crawl through a field of crystalline splinters.

As such, sleeping was something of a trial: out on the wastelands, there weren't too many comfortable places to sleep anyway, but Bill made it all the more uncomfortable by making him transform the moment he lay down for a nap. Even if Dipper simply collapsed from exhaustion and slept where he fell, he would still change – usually in a way designed to wake him up. Sometimes, he'd age once again, leaving him burdened with a thousand new aches and pains and unable to sleep. Sometimes, he'd melt into a viscous, fleshy slop and be forced to gather himself into a puddle just so he could ooze to the next step of the journey. Sometimes, he shattered into a billion jagged pieces and was swept uncomfortably down the road by a gust of wind until Bill changed him into something different. Once, he even turned into a tree, forcing him to sleep standing up on his roots – and hope that nobody was looking for firewood that evening. Whatever the case, Dipper would be left humiliated and waiting to return to normal, while Bill and the Henchmaniacs laughed at him from on high.

The one exception to the rule was the journal work: now that Dipper had a journal of his own to write in, Bill expected him to document his own transformations in exacting detail, and would allow him some time to rest his feet and write down his observations – but _only_ if he was actually writing. As such, if he ever wanted to spare his aching feet another fifteen miles on the road, he'd have to work his fingers to the bone in scribbling down everything he'd been in the last few hours, from transformation times to species details. Plus, if Bill wasn't satisfied with his work, he'd punish him by seizing control of the transformation process and sentencing him to an especially embarrassing series of shapes and forms.

After the first three punishments, Dipper had also learned that Bill wouldn't tolerate the book being lost either, and had been forced to steal a backpack from the collapsed remains of a department store just so he wouldn't end up leaving his journal at a campsite.

Still, Dipper might have been able to deal with it all – the monsters, the dangers, the horrors, the late-night doubts, the writer's cramp, the sore feet and the many, many humiliations – if he'd seen anyone alive, sane and human at any point in the last few days (or weeks or months or years). One single, solitary glimpse of another person would have made the whole thing worthwhile: quite apart from the fact that it would have been a welcome change from the loneliness, it would have been a sign that his current mission wasn't a complete and total snipe hunt, that he might actually find the other Zodiac participants and maybe, just _maybe_ , find some way of forming the wheel and stopping Bill once and for all. But from what he'd seen so far, the wastelands had been completely uninhabited; no fleeing refugees, no encampments, no shantytowns, no pockets of resistance, no collections of toys gathered for Bill's amusement, not even a few desperate survivors clinging to life in the ruined townships he'd blundered through.

No Zodiac participants – apart from that one encounter with Pyronica-as-Pacifica, which served only to get his hopes up and leave him all the more miserable.

No means of saving the world and stopping Bill.

No sign of Mabel, Stan, Ford, Wendy or any of the others.

And no way of knowing if he'd ever see any of them ever again.

* * *

Needless to say, after everything he'd been through in the last few days (or weeks, or months or _whatever_ ), Dipper had just about given up on seeing another living soul.

Indeed, he'd gotten so used to being alone in the wasteland that he'd gotten into the habit of talking to himself, holding long and extremely detailed conversations with imaginary people as he struggled to finish his latest journal entry. For a while, he was even able to pretend that Mabel, Soos, Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan were there with him – up until he lost hope of ever seeing the genuine articles ever again, of course; after that, it was back to talking to thin, anonymous air.

As such, it came as something of a surprise when he staggered out of the cave he'd been sheltering in the previous evening – only to find that the landscape had changed yet again: yesterday, there'd been nothing but billowing deserts of sulphurous dunes glowing faintly under an ink-black sky without sun or stars. Now, just downhill from the cave entrance was a dirt road leading through a heavily-cratered stretch of grassland… and at the end of the road sat a colossal span of chain-link fence, topped with razor wire and thoroughly reinforced with cinderblocks, wrecked cars, felled trees and all manner of other junk. Beyond the fence, Dipper could just make out the shapes of guard towers, tents, prefab buildings, armoured vehicles and…

 _People._

From his current vantage point, Dipper could clearly recognize the shapes of human beings behind the fence – hundreds of living, breathing, perfectly normal human beings: soldiers and civilians, men, women, even children, all of them somehow eking out an existence here in the wasteland with only a reinforced gate and the heavily-armed sentry towers between them and the madness outside.

And yes, this camp was almost certainly another one of Bill's sick jokes – maybe some kind of illusion, or maybe everyone behind the wall was really a monster disguised with human skin – but at that point, Dipper hadn't seen another living human being since the start of Weirdmageddon, and he was almost past caring… and even if he hadn't been almost out of his mind with loneliness, he'd seen just how many civilians were down there. He couldn't guess at where they'd all come from, but some of these people might be from Gravity Falls; it wasn't guaranteed, but perhaps they would know where the Zodiac participants were being held… or perhaps this place was actually one of the prisons that Bill had boasted of, and one of the Zodiac participants was hidden somewhere in the camp.

It was a stretch, true, but right now Dipper didn't have any other option. So, pausing only to hastily rub the sleep from his eyes, he began making his way down towards the fence – mentally babbling a litany of desperate pleas for good luck as he descended.

 _Please be friendly, please be friendly, please be friendly,_ he begged silently. _Please don't mistake me for one of Bill's monsters. Please don't shoot me. And please, please please please_ please, _don't react badly when you see me shapeshifting._

But funnily enough, Dipper didn't shapeshift at all in the journey from the cave to the fence. At first, he couldn't guess as to why, but then he felt the distinctive spark of Weirdness in the air around him, a telltale sign of Bill working his influence in a very direct way.

Bill was suppressing Dipper's transformations.

Why?

More importantly, did Dipper really want to know?

He shook his head, and tried to put such concerns out of his head for the time being. It didn't work, but it at least calmed him down just enough to call out to the nearest sentry tower without his voice wobbling out of control.

Immediately, Dipper found himself being held at gunpoint by the sentry while three other soldiers crept outside to survey him for any sign of Weirdness. For ten heart-stopping minutes, Dipper was forced to stand perfectly still while they checked both his eyes with a flashlight, studied his fingers for claws, rolled up his sleeves to look for scales and other signs of monstrous skin, and even measured his heart rate – apparently just to make sure that he had a heart at all. Fortunately, Dipper's regenerated birthmark didn't draw too much notice: after all, the guards were clearly tired, desperate and at the end of their collective rope, but they weren't stupid.

None of the soldiers asked him any questions, nor were they interested in knowing who he was or what he was doing there – and as it eventually became clear, they didn't _need_ to. After all, just about every single refugee that had accepted sanctuary at the camp had the same story: Weirdmageddon had ruined their lives, destroyed their homes, taken away their families, and left them fleeing aimlessly across the Wasteland of the Weird in search of safety for weeks on end before finally stumbling into the encampment. So long as they were human and unarmed, they were welcome in the camp for as long as supplies remained. Unfortunately, this meant that the soldiers were pretty vague about exactly where the refugees had come from.

Still, that didn't stop Dipper from asking questions of his own – not that he had much success.

"Gravity Falls? Oregon?" one of the men (a sergeant) grumbled wearily. "Kid, when Weirdmageddon began, we were slap-bang in the middle of Colorado, and since then we've been teleported everywhere from Texas to Dubai and picked up over two thousand new refugees along the way. So tell me, after all those places and all those people, do you really think we'd _notice_ refugees from some podunk town in the middle of goddamn nowhere?"

"But it's important!" Dipper exploded. "I'm trying to find people who can help stop Bill-"

His response was almost immediately drowned out by an earsplitting burst of mirthless laughter of the soldiers.

"Stop Bill Cipher?" echoed the sergeant. "Oh, that's rich. That's something new right there. Guess you missed the sight of the Rift spitting back all the nukes we launched at it, huh? Or maybe you just slept through the day that giant goddamn triangle took a bite out of the planet? You remember that?"

"This is different! There's a way of stopping him – it almost worked when me and my friends tried it, and if I can just find them again-"

"Kiddo, I don't know who the hell your friends are or what you _think_ you almost got working; I don't know and I don't care, 'cuz whatever it is, _it's not gonna work._ Comprende? You're – what? – twelve years old-"

"Thirteen."

" _Shut up and listen!"_ the sergeant bellowed. "Kid, you are a fart in the wind at this point. If you think some mouthy little bastard like you's gonna win out against Bill Cipher when the best and brightest of the US army couldn't, you might as well stay outside. See, back at the start of this nightmare, we had a full complement of men, machines, supplies, a functional CO. Since then, we've lost about half our troops, our jeeps and tanks are falling apart faster than we can fix 'em, we're down to our last drops of fuel, we've had to top up the rations and ammo with what little we can steal from the ruins, and our commanding officer's barely sober long enough to issue a single order. Right now, we're barely managing to keep all these refugees fed, and with our captain bagsying all the morphine we've got left, the medics can barely keep them stable if they get sick… and right now, the officers are only _just_ keeping the rest of the base from mutinying. You think there's hope of winning out here? Get that shit right outta your head. You wanna stay in this camp? Keep your nose clean, do as you're told, line up for rations when reveille sounds, don't start fights, and don't get anyone's hopes up with anything about Zodiac circles or six-fingered men or whatever. And while you're at it, stay clear of the mourners near the hill if you value your health. Clear?"

Dipper sighed. "Crystal."

"Fantastic. Now go on inside: look for your friends if you think it'll make your life a little easier, but if you try to get these people's hopes up and lead them on some doomed rebellion, I swear to god I'll shoot you myself."

There was a pause, as the sergeant issued a series of complicated-looking hand signals to the watching sentry tower. A moment later, the gates swung open, allowing Dipper into the encampment beyond.

"Welcome to Fort Acheron, kiddo," said the sergeant, as the gate clanged shut behind him.

As Dipper very quickly learned, Acheron was just one of the many names this place had earned in the days since Weirdmageddon had begun… and taking a good look at the cluttered grounds, it was no surprise that most of those names seemed related to Hell in some way. What had seemed to be a well-organized camp from his position at the cave entrance was now unveiled as a shambolic mess: vehicles left where they'd broke down, prefabricated buildings cratered and scarred from firefights, tents hanging in charred tatters, the ground strewn with garbage, engine parts, and "leakages" from the portable toilets. Needless to say, the place stank of raw sewage and rotten food.

And as for the people who actually lived here, it seemed that the guards he'd met at the door were the most presentable of the bunch: the soldiers on duty were on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion, most of them kept awake through instant coffee, energy drinks, and "glass," whatever that meant. Meanwhile, off-duty soldiers huddled in twitchy, paranoid mobs all over the compound, smoking hastily-rolled cigarettes and pointing loaded guns at anyone who dared approach them; many were drunk, swigging vigorously from bottles of scotch. Most of the thousand-strong civilian populace kept to themselves, never leaving their tents unless they had no other choice, often shying away from the entrances whenever a soldier walked by.

At the very heart of the camp, a massive hill towered over all the huddled masses. According to the few soldiers who were willing to answer Dipper's questions, it hadn't been there before Weirdmageddon, but had simply grown there over of the course of the camp's journey across the world. Now, every single refugee not hiding now clustered around that colossal hill in a ring, seated on the lower slopes in their hundreds – almost as if they were guarding it. None of them spoke; they just sat there, heads bowed, barely reacting to anyone or anything that approached. Every now and again, a few of them would get up and return to their tents, usually with fresh tears on their faces; every now and again, a few newcomers arrived to replace them.

And right at the top of the hill, a man sat cross-legged at the very apex of the mound, an inky-black silhouette seemingly always backdropped by the angry red sun.

According to the soldiers, the people who sat around the hill were those refugees who'd been overwhelmed by everything they'd seen since Weirdmageddon: called "mourners" for lack of a better term, they were all but catatonic from the horror of what they'd witnessed, the hill was the only place where these unfortunates could find solace – among others of their kind. There, they sat in silence, sometimes weeping but rarely loud enough to be heard, until the time came for them to return to their tents, where they retreated back into themselves once more. But perhaps it was something worse than grief, some of the soldiers suggested: maybe it was the effects of Weirdness, some mental mutation cooked up by Bill just to make the lives of the refugees a little bit more hellish. Some weeks ago, base personnel had attempted to break up one of the gatherings, only to end up with a riot on their hands – plus three paralysed infantrymen; these days, nobody dared disturb the hillside gatherings, not even to ask how long the mourners would be there.

As for the man atop the hill, nobody knew what to make of him. He'd been there ever since the gatherings had begun, and had never once budged from his seat: he was always there, day or night, never once pausing to eat, sleep, or answer any of the instructions shouted at him via megaphone. Though curious, none of the officers had been able to question him – not without risking the wrath of the mourners sitting below him – so once they were certain that he wasn't intending to hurt anyone or spread Weirdness throughout the camp, they'd let him be.

Everyone advised that Dipper stay well away from the mourners while they were at the hill. So, with little reason to disagree, he went on asking the other refugees if they'd seen any of his friends, careful to avoid mentioning the Zodiac or any plans of stopping Bill. Unfortunately, after almost three hours of querying, he was forced to leave the tent city empty-handed: nobody had seen anything of Mabel, Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford or any of the others, and more depressingly, nobody had even heard of Gravity Falls. In fact, all he'd heard were the many legends of Bill Cipher being passed around the campfires – the tales of the victories he'd won over Earth, the whispered speculation on his origins, and the horror stories of what he'd done to those who dared oppose him. A few particularly crazed-looking storytellers even claimed that Bill had conquered Heaven and taken God's place; and some claimed that Bill _was_ God and always had been, that Weirdmageddon was the righteous judgement that all sinners would have to accept for the rest of eternity.

In the end, Dipper couldn't listen to another word, and took to wandering the camp at random in the desperate hope of finding a familiar face. But after well over an hour of fruitless searching, his mind was so numb that he didn't notice the sudden absence of Weirdness in the air around him; nor did he realize that he'd begun to stray too close to the hill – and by the time he didn't notice, one of nearest mourners had already reached out and grabbed him by the sleeve.

"What are you?" hissed the mourner.

"Bwuh?"

" _What are you?"_

"I-I-I… what are you talking about?" Dipper stammered. "I'm human, just like you!"

"I saw your eyes change colour!"

Dipper froze. Too late, he realized that Bill was no longer suppressing his transformations; too late, he realized that the demented nacho had been biding his time for the punchline of his latest sick joke… and now, the stage was set for what only be a lynching courtesy of an angry mob.

"Look, this is a mistake," Dipper insisted desperately. "You have to believe me-"

"I saw you!" the mourner shrieked. "I _saw you!_ You changed! You're one of _his_ , aren't you? You belong to Bill!"

By now, several other mourners had awoken from their catatonia and were starting to take notice of the commotion; a few were already on their feet and edging closer to get a good look at Dipper's eyes, and some appeared to be reaching for what looked suspiciously like concealed weaponry.

 _Oh no, no, no, no, no…_ Dipper's mind raced wildly for a solution. _Gotta keep moving: if I transform into something useful – a hare, a bird or something – I should be able to get away and after that all I need to do is get out of this camp and keep running._

Unfortunately, this proved to be easier said than done: not only had the closest mourner already shifted his vicelike grip from Dipper's sleeve to his shoulder, several others were already closing in to cut off his escape; even if he could struggle free somehow, even if he did transform into something halfway useful, he'd only end up blundering right into another wall of angry mob. And worse still, the noise was drawing more attention from the surrounding crowd as time went on: even with so many people in the way, Dipper could clearly see mourners across the hill rising from their positions to get a good look at him, crowding closer and closer to box in the threat that had appeared in their midst. And even if only a few of them weren't armed, the end result would be the same: if any of them saw Dipper transform, they'd tear him to pieces.

And just as Dipper thought the situation couldn't possibly get any worse, Bill Cipher's laughing voice echoed across reality. "It's that special time again, ladies and gentleman!" he shrieked. "It's _audience participation time!"_

Somewhere in the distance, a cheesy-sounding game show jingle sounded, and the Henchmaniacs went wild.

"This time, folks, we turn over control of Ol' Pine Tree's transformations to the subconscious minds of any and all human beings in the immediate vicinity. Now then, what could all these people possibly be thinking of – apart from me, of course? What could a bunch of grief-crazed delusional maniacs have on their puny little minds? What could they want more than anything else in the world? Let's find out!"

The game show jingle rang out again… and then, Dipper felt himself _change,_ his entire body shifting and warping as a fresh burst of Weirdness swept over him like a tsunami, this time driven by the thoughts of the nearest mourner. He could tell he was transforming into another human being, but he couldn't guess precisely who, but judging by the way the world around him seemed to be getting progressively larger, his new form had to be either unusually short or just very young. Seconds later, the transformation came to an end, and the mourner holding his shoulder reared back in astonishment. "Bobby?" he whispered, eyes wide and disbelieving.

"I'm not-" Dipper clapped a hand to his mouth, realizing that he was now speaking with someone's else's voice. By the sounds of things, his new form couldn't be much older than five years old. Nonetheless, he tried again: "My name's Dipper," he lisped childishly. "I'm not-"

But the mourner hadn't heard him, or more disturbingly, he simply hadn't been interested in listening. Swatting aside the other mourners who were already reaching out for him, he seized Dipper around the middle with a shout of "Bobby!" gathering him into a bone-crushing hug as he did so.

"No, I'm-"

"Oh god, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, Bobby, I couldn't save you, I couldn't save you," the man wept.

Dipper was getting ready to make himself heard over the clamour of the crowd, when another pair of hands seized him by the shoulders and dragged him out of the first mourner's arms. He had just enough time to recognize that his newest captor was a woman and speaking a language that he had never heard before; then, another wave of thought-driven Weirdness swept over him and set off another transformation: Dipper grew dramatically, his limbs sprouting outwards as his aging process accelerated through childhood, adolescence, and all the way into adulthood.

Halfway through the process he tumbled out of the woman's arms and landed flat on his face… and when he rose again, he did so with the body of a grown man. Immediately, the woman lunged forward with an untranslatable shriek, kissing him fiercely on mouth, weeping in mingled grief and joy as she did so. Dipper tried to wriggle away, tried to explain to the woman that he wasn't really her husband – or whoever he was supposed to be – but even if she could understand English, it was clear that she wasn't listening.

Another mourner dragged him away, and this time the transformation was even quicker: in the space of a second, Dipper had become a woman, perhaps Wendy's age – and judging by those anguished shouts, he was now identical to this newest mourner's dead sister. Once again, he tried to explain himself, but another mourner lunged towards him, kicking off another transformation… and all of a sudden, the entire crowd was reaching out for him, their thoughts raining down on him so violently that Dipper found himself lurching from one transformation to the next, one form melting into the other so rapidly that it was a marvel that any of the mob could get a grip on him. And all the while, Dipper was trying desperately to raise his voice over the roar of the crowd even as his vocal cords twisted his voice out of shape.

" _Don't bother trying to explain things to them, Pine Tree,"_ Bill cackled, his voice echoing inaudibly across Dipper's mind. _"They'll never hear a word you say, not with the way they've been broken. See, I've made sure they completely disengaged from reality – they don't even recognize the fact that you're a shapeshifter. All they know is that their friends and loved ones are gone, and every time they close their eyes, they see those deaths happen again. See, you're not a shapeshifter to these people: you're the only way they'll ever get their nearest and dearest back in their lives… and all of them want you. What do you suppose they'll do? Oh, I know…"_

Bill laughed again, demented giggling forcing its way across Dipper's nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. _**"TUG-OF-WAR TIME!"**_

Hands reached out from the crowd, fastening on Dipper's shoulders, clamping down on his arms and legs, grabbing him by the hair, seizing him with every handhold they could find. Frenzied voices cried out the names of lost friends and families, growing ever-more deranged with every passing second; maddened, bloodshot eyes covetously scrutinized his rapidly-shifting features from every angle, searching frantically for dead faces; hands clamped down tighter and tighter, fingernails gripping tight enough to puncture skin and draw blood. More and more greedy hands seized him, one half of the crowd trying to drag Dipper in one direction even as the other half dried to drag him in another – and an ice-cold droplet of terror landed in the pit of Dipper's stomach as he realized that this could only end with the mob literally tearing him apart.

 _I'm gonna die,_ he thought. _Oh god, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die…_

Worse still, unless this constant shapeshifting made him literally invincible, it was going to take a very long time to expire.

Now in a blind panic, Dipper started to scream, hoping against hope that someone sane might be able to hear him and come to the rescue. But even if the roar of the crowd wasn't drowning him out, the first thing his rescuers saw would be him, still transforming: he'd be stumbling from one lynch mob to the other.

One way or the other, he was dead.

Dipper closed his eyes and waited for the end, hoping against hope that he wouldn't notice the pain. He hadn't entertained too many thoughts about death in his lifetime, even during the mecha-fight with Gideon or the droid-flight over Gravity Falls, but he'd hoped that he'd be able to go out bravely, or at the very least that he'd die doing something important and meaningful. But here he was, about to be ripped to pieces by an angry mob of mind-warped unfortunate, screaming futilely for help and trying not to hate himself for how little he'd accomplished since Weirdmageddon. He hadn't even gotten as far as finding his friends, let alone rescuing any of them, and all his hopes of remaking the wheel had come to nothing. And now more than anything else, he wished that he'd said goodbye to his friends when he'd had the chance.

 _I'm sorry, Mabel,_ he thought.

And then, just as he thought his limbs were about to start snapping off, the air was split by an ear-shredding burst of sound, louder than an air-raid siren and twice as high-pitched. And in its wake, the entire hillside was plunged into deathly, impenetrable silence.

* * *

Bill Cipher blinked in astonishment, not entirely comprehending what he'd just witnessed. Gradually, he realized that whatever had just happened to his vision of Fort Acheron, he was now missing a plaything.

"What the _hell?"_ he muttered.

This wasn't possible. He knew for a fact that nothing should have gone wrong: he'd set the stage perfectly, tweaked the minds of the participants gently enough to turn them obsessive – he'd even ensured a surge of near-constant transformation just so Pine Tree wouldn't actually suffer any lasting harm. It should have been logically and illogically impossible for the little bastard to have gone anywhere, not with Bill's power so thoroughly focussed on the area.

He looked again, focussing his all-seeing eye on the hill at the centre of the fort, waiting for his plaything to reappear amidst the mourners. But no matter how many times he scrutinized the camp's layout, no matter how many layers of existence he examined one after the other, Pine Tree remained completely invisible. More than a little peeved at the disruption, he tested local reality for any signs of teleportation or open portals; still nothing. Now downright infuriated, he reached with his senses for any sign of his own handiwork, looking for the telltale weirdness that defined Pine Tree's shapeshifting abilities; finding none in the area, he expanded his search to the entire planet, sure that he'd find something if he drew back his focus – but once again, he turned up nothing.

Dipper was gone.

* * *

For a full thirty seconds, Dipper could only lie where the mob had dropped him, trembling and marvelling deliriously at his sudden good luck. He wasn't even shapeshifting anymore: the moment the noise had rung out across the hill, he'd returned to his own shape and stopped transforming… but this time, Bill wasn't in control; he could tell as much by the lack of Weirdness in the air. Something _else_ was at work.

He looked expectantly up at the mob, and saw that they were all falling to their knees, pressing their faces into the dirt in what could only be purest fear – or reverence... and all of them were now facing the hilltop. A swift glance in the direction of the peak revealed that the mystery man sitting atop it was gone.

"What's this?" said a pleasant voice. "A lost little lamb, I take it?" A ripple of otherworldly laughter split the air. "This is not the way back to your flock, little one."

A hand glided down from above and seized Dipper by the right arm, hauling him upright with an eerie, almost _arachnid_ grace. As he was on his feet, Dipper looked up to thank his rescuer, and immediately himself staring in bewilderment at the figure that now towered over him: at first, he seemed to be nothing more than a shadow painted on the air, a pitch-black shape cut into the fabric of reality just in front of him. But then he blinked, and suddenly he realized that he was looking at what appeared to be a relatively ordinary human being… but perhaps "ordinary" wasn't the right word to apply for the man standing before him.

Whoever he was, he was very tall: Manly Dan Corduroy himself would have barely been at eye-level with the stranger's collarbone, and the man's unusually spindly build made him seem taller still; an almost tentacular set of legs supported an improbably narrow torso, augmented by long, willowy arms tipped with hands like giant spiders. Of course, skinny frames and wasted bodies weren't unusual around here what with all the food shortages, but this man didn't look starved or even vaguely weak; if anything, he looked as though he'd wandered through Weirdmageddon completely unscathed: his tailored black suit and crimson overcoat were immaculate, untouched by the ravages of the wastelands, and his shoes looked as though they'd been freshly polished. His swarthy, handsome face was clean-shaven, painstakingly-groomed, almost regal in bearing, and graced with an effortless smile – complete with perfect phosphorescent white teeth.

Immediately, Dipper's mind veered into well-justified paranoia: maybe Bill had conjured up this apparition just to add an extra layer of confusion to this latest game. Maybe this was another one of the Henchmaniacs disguised as a human being. Or maybe this was Bill himself, having conned some unfortunate human into surrendering his body for possession.

 _But if that's the case, then why do his eyes look so… normal?_

"Well now!" said the mystery man. "You're a little worse for the wear, aren't you? Tell me, have you eaten today?"

Dipper could only gawp in confusion. "I… what?" he gibbered.

"Didn't think so." With another ripple of unearthly laughter, the man turned back towards the hilltop. "Come along," he said, as he strode away. "You're welcome to lunch on the hilltop – my treat!"

"B-b-but… but what did you do? Why aren't I transforming anymore? A-and what about all these people?" Dipper indicated the mourners around him, all of whom were still silently kneeling before the man in obeisance. "What did you do to them?"

"Nothing. People always do that around me, and they always walk away wondering why. Just part of my nature, I suppose. As for your… polymorphic tendencies, I suppose you could say I have a gift for the old works: I know my shapeshifters, and I know a few tricks for settling them down – in flesh and spirit. Now come along, young man: I've a feast waiting on the hilltop, and after all those weeks spent eating nothing but gruel, I think you'll appreciate a picnic!"

And in spite of himself, Dipper found himself following the man up the hill: though still immensely suspicious of this stranger, the promise of food had caught his attention, and more to the point he didn't much fancy waiting around for the mob to stop genuflecting – or for the guards to take an interest. So he hurried after the man with great difficulty, tripping over potholes and stumbling into kneeling mourners as he sprinted; already advantaged by a headstart, the man's long-legged stride allowed him to easily outpace any pursuers, and by the time Dipper had reached the summit of the hill, the stranger was already sitting crosslegged atop it.

Moments later, the food appeared on the hilltop in front of him: an entire platter of sandwiches, a bowl of potato salad, a roast chicken, a freshly-baked pie, a massive bowl of fruit, and enough bottles and cans to sink a ship.

"What are you waiting for?" the man laughed. "The next apocalypse? Dig in!"

Tentatively, Dipper reached for the nearest sandwich and took a less-than-microscopic bite, readying himself for something unpleasant – rotten meat, mouldy bread, poison, rusty nails, or anything else that would readily identify this sudden reprieve as another one of Bill's sick jokes. But instead, all he encountered was a thick filling of what appeared to be tuna, or something similar; it was definitely fish and it was definitely appetising, that much was clear. Dipper took another bite… and another… and another. Before he knew it, he'd finished the sandwich and was mowing hungrily through the next.

"You like it?" said the man. "You should: it's the best in the multiverse. Fresh from Innsmouth."

Dipper paused in mid-bite, and realized that he'd been delayed from asking a rather important question – several, in fact. "Who are you?" he asked.

The mystery man shrugged. "A strange man sitting on a hilltop," he said laconically. "What's wrong? Don't you trust your senses?"

 _Oh brilliant. A comedian. Just what I needed._

Dipper sighed. "What's your name?" he asked, wearily.

"Do you have a few spare hours? Names are a resource I possess in abundance."

"Look, what name do you happen to be using _right_ _now?"_

"Ooh, even trickier when you get down to the subject of avatars; I've lost track of them, and every single one has its own collection of names and titles – not all of them safe for human ears. Still, I suppose I might as well settle for one as long as we're still chatting: you can call me Randolph Carter."

"…but that's not your real name, though, is it?"

"Nope," said Mr Carter. "As a matter of fact, it's the name of a dear friend of mine. Still, I doubt he'll mind if I borrow it: he's been dead for more than half a century by now, and he's well past objecting to anything I do with his mortal remains, be it name or essential salts."

Dipper considered this for a moment. Then, as he idly helped himself to a slice of pie, he belatedly remembered his manners: "My name's Dipper-"

"-Pines," Mr Carter finished smoothly. "I know. Cute nickname by the way, Mason."

Dipper almost choked on his pie. "How did you know that?" he said, once he had finished coughing.

"Let's just say that I've been keeping an eye or fifteen on you since I arrived here; I admit, I'm a little new to the neighbourhood, but I try to learn a little bit about the most important figures in town before I start settling in. Now, I assume you want to know why I rescued you, yes?"

Dipper paused, once again toying with the idea that this strange man might just be another one of the Henchmaniacs sent to mess with him, before finally helping himself to a piece of chicken, followed up with a healthy swig of Pitt Cola. "That'd be pretty helpful, yeah," he muttered, trying not to feel any more ridiculous than he already did.

"I don't normally do favours for anyone other than the members of my immediate family, and sometimes not even for them, but it so happens that you have friends in high places, Dipper Pines. A certain entity offered a substantial boon in return for giving you a brief respite from Bill's games, just long enough to let you catch your breath and have a halfway decent meal. Oh, and our mutual friend also wanted you to have this..."

He held out a plain white envelope. Puzzled, Dipper opened it, and was immediately greeted by an official-looking letter – smudged, blurred and badly-photocopied by the looks of things, but while the official insignia and letterheads were incomprehensible, the text was still perfectly readable.

 _Dear Dipper_

 _I know you've little reason to trust me or the man who delivered this message, but please read carefully. I'm trying to engineer a jailbreak for you and your friend, but Bill's security measures are a little too effective at keeping me out… and Bill's selected you for something awful. He hasn't been too specific in his ranting, but I can already tell it's going to be uniquely sadistic._

 _All I can do is beg you to stay strong: Mabel, Soos, Wendy Stan, Ford and the others are still alive, and a few are even on the brink of freedom – though they don't know it yet. Someone will be coming to rescue you from Bill's newest game, but until then you must endure the torment. Do not despair: hope still remains for your world and your people; Bill might seem invincible, but his own games conceal the seeds of his undoing. He'll try to turn you against your friends, one way or another: keep that in mind when the next stage of his game begins, and try to avoid mentioning me or the messenger if you can help it._

 _Oh, and never forget your curiosity. It might very well save you in the long run._

 _Good luck_

 _Mr A_

"Who's Mr A?" Dipper asked, as he reached for another chicken leg.

"Don't you remember? You've met him before."

"I have?"

"Well, you _may_ have," admitted Mr Carter. "Timelines are a little bit on the uncertain side at present: I suspect Mr A had that incident excised before Weirdmageddon began, just in case Bill started sniffing around the timestream. I doubt you'd forget the whole 'sixty degrees that come in threes' business otherwise."

"Sixty degrees that come in threes…?" echoed Dipper. The words sounded uncannily familiar, but he couldn't work out where he'd heard them before; try as he might, he couldn't match the words to any specific memory, and all he ended up with was a strange and unshakeable sense of déjà vu.

"As for who Mr A is… well, our mutual friend wants to stay under the radar at present, hence why he's only been able to communicate by letters – and only while the Big Bad Triangle's got his eye pointed elsewhere. See, Mr A doesn't have the advantage of stealth, not like me: Bill's seen him before, and he's gotten very paranoid about what our mutual friend might do to him, so he altered the substance of this reality to lock out most of Mr A's power. As of right now, our mutual friend can only draw on a fraction of his true omnipotence, and he can only act when Bill's not paying too much attention to a game in progress; unfortunately, you're one of his favourites, and you've had an eye on you almost every hour of the day for the last few weeks. So, Mr A asked me to act in his stead."

"What do you mean 'the advantage of stealth'? No offence, but I don't think anyone would have missed all the kneeling and praying back there, not if Bill's watching me as closely as you say."

Mr Carter chuckled. "You really don't think much of me, do you? You're still wondering if I'm one of the Henchmaniacs, or perhaps even Bill himself. Well, that's fair enough. Allow me to clear things up for you…"

Suddenly, Dipper was no longer looking at Mr Carter, tall and eerily thin but by all other appearances human: suddenly, he found himself once again face to face with a living shadow, a pitch-black agglomeration of void in the shape of a human being sitting on goatlike hooves. A moment later, there was a flickering in the air and suddenly the shadow was now a monstrous winged creature, dominated by a single burning, three-lobed eye; then a mass of writhing serpents, each one tipped with a mass of jagged fangs; then a cackling reptilian beast with a tentacle sprouting where a head should have been; then a billowing putrescent fog.

A thousand forms passed in seconds, and at the end of it all, Dipper could only cover his eyes and try to ignore the shrieking pain now rippling across his skull.

"Satisfied?" Mr Carter asked expectantly. He was human again – or at least, he _appeared_ to be at present.

"What…" Dipper swallowed hard, trying to steady his pounding heart. "What just happened?"

"You saw a few of my other corporeal forms – a few split-second glimpses, just to make sure you didn't go completely mad at the sight of them. Still, you did well: others would have soiled themselves in terror, but you seem to have gotten away relatively clean. Well, that's to be expected given just how much you've changed over the last few weeks."

"But what _are_ you? If you're not with Bill, then where did you come from?"

"Another world. Another Earth. Another reality. You see, Bill's not as careful as he thinks: he locked out Mr A easily enough, but he never imagined that other entities might take an interest in this dimension. You see, Dipper, the Rift was originally meant to be a straightforward bridge between the Nightmare Realm and yours, but as reality weakens and Weirdness blossoms, things develop beyond even the great Bill Cipher's control – and as the dimensional barriers grow increasingly porous, entities from realities beyond the Nightmare Realm start to sneak in. All of a sudden, the Henchmaniacs aren't the only kids on the playground; Bill's private party's been gatecrashed and he doesn't even know it."

"And you're one of the gatecrashers, then?"

"Exactly. And as being outside of our dear old Bill's sphere of knowledge, I can put my not-inconsiderable skills to work in keeping the two of us hidden from his all-seeing eye."

"But if that's true, then you could stop all this! You could do everything Mr A can't! You could stop Bill!"

"I _could,_ were I so inclined," said Mr Carter. "But where would be the fun in that? I'm a god in my own right, Dipper: If Bill and I were to battle it out, it'd be a pretty balanced duel… and in all honesty, balanced fights have never held my interest. They often lead to boring, seventy-round matches that can only end in TKOs and ring-outs. I'm not here for a fair fight, Dipper: I'm here for entertainment, and if the price I have to pay for my amusement is lending a hand here and there, so be it – but don't expect me to play deus ex machina."

Dipper thought for a moment. "You might not be Bill," he said quietly, "But you're a lot more like him than I thought."

"Does it surprise you? Every dimension has a few tricksters worthy of the name: Mad Jim Jaspers, Loki, Tzeentch, the Outsider, Q, Lady Malice, the Wandering Piper, and yes, even Bill – all of us playing our games across the multiverse at the expense of mortals and immortals alike. I'm just one of the few who's realized that there's no point in setting fire to the gameboard and killing all your opponents... well, except in emergencies," he added with a wink. "Ultimate victory gets very boring after a while, apocalypses doubly so. I mean, once everyone's dead or permanently under your dominion, there's precious little to do, other than torture them; and even if you do that, you're only delaying the inevitable realization that the _true_ fun ended ages ago. Real entertainment requires a subtle touch and careful preparation: far better to nudge the pawns in just the right way so as to engineer a gripping storyline, brief by immortal standards but undeniably entertaining… or better still, just wait to see what the mortals will do next, and see how much anguish you can milk out of it. I should know: I worked on the Manhattan Project, and I got four decades of fear and political turmoil out of that. Tricksters like me struggle to learn this lesson all their lives. Bill hasn't yet… and that's why he'll lose. Even if he wins every single game with you and your friends, even if he breaks your spirits and renders you down into mindless husks, even if Mr A fails to stop him, he'll still lose to the one opponent he can't defeat: _**boredom.**_ "

Mr Carter paused for a moment. "Speaking of anguish," he eventually continued, "you might want to take a good look over there."

Dipper followed the trickster's outstretched hand to a distant spot on the horizon, just above Fort Acheron's northern border: there, a flickering light was being cast upon the dilapidated chain-link fence, illuminating a subtle-but-noticeable _rippling_ in the air just above the razor wire; the more Dipper looked at it, the more it seemed as though something was battering at the fabric of reality from the other side, like someone trying to claw their way into a tent. Then, as he watched, the well-worn substance of the world split open, tearing a thirty-foot gash in reality and exposing the endless lightless void beyond... and from this colossal shadowy wound, _something_ began pouring out of it

At first, it appeared to be little more than a torrent of pitch-black fluid, thick and cloying as tar. However, as it spilled out of the wound and pooled upon the ground below, Dipper realized that whatever this stuff was, it didn't seem to react to light: no reflections could be seen in its inky black depths, nor did it glisten even with the rays of the sun glaring down on it. By now, the tear in reality above it had shut, but the pond below it was still growing, and it didn't appear to be showing any signs of stopping. It was starting to bubble quite a bit, too, and unless Dipper was mistaken, he could just about recognize the beginnings of _tentacles_ starting to sprout from the puddle.

"What is _that?"_ he whispered.

"It's another gatecrasher," said Mr Carter. "Courtesy of an ancillary rift in reality. Unfortunately, it's not as friendly as Mr A and not as amiable as me, so it's also your cue to start moving again."

"Why? What's so dangerous about it?"

"Take a good look."

By now, several soldiers had arrived at the edge of the puddle to investigate, and as Dipper watched, one of the tentacles sprouting from the pond reached out and wrapped itself around the nearest gunman. Immediately, the entire squad opened fire, hammering the viscous black lake with all the firepower they could muster. After about seven seconds of this, the tentacle relinquished its hold on the soldier and allowed him to collapse to the dirt, soaked from head to toe in black gunk; slowly, the unfortunate victim got to his feet and opened his eyes, and even from here Dipper couldn't fail to recognize the unearthly red light shining from the man's hollow eyesockets.

Before the rest of the squad could react, the afflicted soldier had lunged forward, spewing a thick plume of oily black vomit across the nearest of his comrades and tackling the next of them to the ground. The remaining soldiers opened fire once again, but with even less success than the last time: the slime-coated man didn't even react to the bullets tearing through his chest and face, and rose from his newest victim with renewed vigour. Worse still, the other two soldiers – the one who'd been puked on and the one who'd been throttled half to death – now rose in tandem, soaked and dripping with foul black ooze, their eyes aglow with a sickening garnet light.

Within a matter of seconds, the entire squad was dead or infected; seemingly oblivious to the alarm bells resounding across the camp, the slime-coated survivors gathered their weapons and began a slow, methodical march towards the barracks, clearly on the lookout for more victims to infect. Behind them, the puddle of black gunk expanded further, spitting out longer tentacles as it did so… and somewhere in the heart of that sickening mire, _other_ things began to take shape.

"You see?" said Mr Carter. "If you want my advice, you'd best stay away from this camp from now on: I think our newest gatecrasher's already picked a beachhead from which to plot out an invasion."

"An _invasion?!_ But what-"

"You'll see soon enough. Now, part of my bargain with Mr A was that you weren't to be harmed, and that includes finding you a safe escape route, so if you'll just bear with me a moment…"

Without warning, Mr Carter reached out and pressed two long, spindly index fingers to Dipper's temples.

"What are you doing?"

"Just seeing how you're progressing. As Mr A said, Bill's got something interesting cooked up for you, and I'd like to see how it plays out if I can."

There was a pause, and then Mr Carter smiled wider than ever before. "You really are a budding little shoggoth, aren't you?" he chuckled. "You're going to be _spectacular."_

And with that, he gave Dipper a push _just_ hard enough send him sliding off the hilltop and into a tumbling death-dive down the slopes of the hill.

Before Dipper could even open his mouth to scream, however, he was transforming again: the shove had budged him out of Mr Carter's sphere of influence, and now he was back in Bill's vision - and his "power" was active once more. By the time Dipper hit the ground, he was a large inflatable beach ball, and the impact sent him bouncing merrily out of the fort.

Then he was a paper plane soaring out over the wasteland, hoping against hope that he'd find an updraft before he hit the ground. Then he was a helium balloon borne upon the wind, travelling wherever it would take him. Then at last he was a bird, flying wherever he pleased.

For ten long minutes, Dipper's luck held out; then, his shape erupted into a giant flannel picnic blanket and he plummeted from the sky with all the aerodynamic grace of a basket of wet laundry.

He landed heavily, fortunately still in his blanket form. Unfortunately, he soon realized that he'd been unlucky enough to land _on top_ of someone, because hands were already flinging him to the ground and a pair of heavy-booted feet were kicking him viciously in the stitching.

And then, just when he thought his day couldn't get any worse, he changed shape again, and once again he was a human being.

At first, all Dipper could notice was the knife being pressed to his throat, and the eyes staring back at him, wide and frenzied from paranoia and lack of sleep and god only knew how much adrenaline. Then the blade gently drew away from his neck, and he finally noticed the familiar locks of red hair that framed those eyes.

From above him, a voice murmured "Dipper?"

In spite of himself, Dipper's face split into an elated smile.

" _Wendy!"_

* * *

Some distance away, the man who was not Mr Randolph Carter smiled contentedly to himself as the figure before him took a seat on the hilltop. For twelve seconds, there was silence between the two of them, broken only by the sounds of carnage from the slime-deluged Fort below them.

'Mr Carter' was the first to break the silence.

"Axolotl," he said quietly, favouring his guest with a nod.

The man with the sash returned the nod. "Nyarlathotep."

"That borrowed form ill-becomes you, 'Mr A.' I know you didn't have the luxury of choice, but you really could have made do with something a little less flimsy."

"He was the only volunteer," Mr A admitted.

"And that should stop you? Find a new shell, hollow out his brainpan and sit inside his skull. Problem solved, as far as I'm concerned."

"Some of us live by a code, Nyarlathotep. I can't just possess anyone without their consent: my work requires free will, just as your schemes and plots require it."

"Except you lack a sense of humour: I've seen Jyggalag laugh more than you. Seriously, was this etiolated streak of piss the best body you could find to house your consciousness?"

"I will admit he's not exactly the most imposing specimen, but he genuinely wants to help end Bill's reign on earth; in fact, he won't stop encouraging me… but I gather he was pretty big on encouragements before Weirdmaggedon. And incidentally, criticisms about disguises are the last thing I would expect from you, 'Mr Carter.' Could you have been any more obvious?"

"As a matter of fact, I could: I could have called myself Howard Phillip or Phillip Lovecraft or Whipple Phillips or-"

"I get the picture, thanks very much. So, you gave Dipper my message."

"That I did."

"And you're sure Bill couldn't see what was happening?"

"Positive. I guarantee he'll be very annoyed with Dipper over today's blackout, though. In fact, I imagine he'll question him about it at length; for your sake, I hope our young friend has enough iron in the blood to withstand extended interrogation."

"He does; his sister, too. As for whether they'll be able to withstand what Bill has in store for Dipper… I'm not sure."

"And what about the Filth? We've already seen plenty of uninvited guests in this dimension, but the Dreamers' Dream is something quite different."

"I know. Up until today, I would have thought that you or Shub-Niggurath would have been the worst possible visitors to this realm of existence-"

"I'll take that as a compliment-"

"-but if the Filth is loose in this reality, then the normal dimensional barriers that would have prevented such hostile incursions have worn down to nothing. Bill's shot himself in the foot and he doesn't even realize it."

"Maybe so… but you realize what it means for this reality, don't you?"

"I do." Axolotl sighed. "It means that this dimension has already passed the Weirdness Event Horizon: it's gone the way of the Jaspers Warp. Even if we stop Bill, even if we can contain the Filth, this world will never be the same again."

* * *

A/N: Up next... a plaything struggles against the restraints! Care to speculate? Feel free to theorize and review!


	13. Making Hell Of Heaven

A/N: Sorry for the delay, everyone; it's been... eventful. Last chapter I mentioned I had doctors appointments to attend... and this month, the health issues were upgraded to require a visit to the hospital. I'm sure you don't want to hear the whole dreary story, but I've got a follow-up appointment with the doctor and I've been sweating spinal fluid over what results I might eventually discover. Needless to say, the hospital prep, visit, recovery and the inevitable worrying sessions have cut into writing time considerably; I can only apologize for the delay and try to be more prompt in future... although I should probably warn you that the nervousness probably had an effect on overall mood of the chapter.

In the meantime, a massive thank-you to everyone who reviewed, favourited and followed.

 **Northgalus2002:** Loved your summation - and without saying too much, your guess is correct!

 **Kraven the Hunter:** Well, here's a thing to remember - Mr A can't manifest himself or his full power in Bill's dominion, so he has to make do with possessing willing hosts. So, if he's ever able to bring his physical body to Gravity Falls, he might take a human form to make conversation easier, and - well, you never know - that form might very well be Alex Hirsch. As for how a salamander has the power... well, that's a longer story. As for Innsmouth, Nyarlathotep is from another version of Earth: the tuna came from his version of Innsmouth, which is still as weird and disturbing as ever. Meanwhile, the Reset Button... well, trying to conceive of a reset button for all _this_ will be interested (but if it'll be used or not... you'll have to wait and see!) Thanks again!

 **Guest:** Thanks for the review! Though - people have written Nyarlathotep as a good guy? Wow, I'm reading the wrong stories... As for the plaything struggling against the restraints... hmmm, I may need to upgrade the psychic shields. Good job!

 **Fantasy Fan 223:** Glad you like the results of the Mr A arc and how things have gone so far. It's going to be interesting deciding Bill's eventual fate, but without saying too much, chances are it's going to be something suitably bizarre. Meanwhile, _everyone's_ in line for escape attempts: it's a matter of who tries first - and who meets with success first. Remember, struggling against the restraints doesn't necessarily mean "breaking them."

 **Krista Perry:** I love your overall review of the story! Gravity Falls already had a subtle touch of Lovecraftian flavour to it, so introducing full-blown Lovecraft to the setting is always fun. As for what's going to happen to Dipper - that's going to be in a few chapter's time, and I'm going to see if I can include a few subtle notes of hope before then. I'm glad you like the story so far, and I hope this chapter lives up to the level of quality established!

 **ImpossibleJedi4:** Yep! Always a good sign.

 **Blind-Eyephone:** Poor kiddo indeed - and without saying too much, Bill is going to make even this little joy turn to ash in his mouth; after all, remember how he handled his crush on Pacifica?

Anyway, without further ado: the latest chapter! Feel free to hypothesize, theorize, critique, recommend, nitpick, dissect and leave lovely long reviews as you please! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is still not mine. Belay your shock, good people.

* * *

For almost two weeks, Mabel stayed in the world of Endless Summer. She knew what was waiting for her back in Mabeland, and even with the possibility of escape on offer, she'd no interest in playing along with Bill's sick games; and besides, she'd had more than enough of her private utopia the first time around. So, as soon as she'd had the chance to make her mind, she'd picked the portal to the now-frozen Gravity Falls and resolved to live with whatever it threw at her.

Or at least, that had been the plan.

Day-to-day survival wasn't a problem, of course: with time permanently frozen, it wasn't as if there was anything out there that could deliberately hurt her, and because most of the stores had been open at the time Weirdmageddon had begun, finding food was a simple matter of strolling in and taking whatever she needed. She'd even gotten into the habit of leaving handwritten apology notes on the counters of grocery stores she'd looted – just to soothe her conscience. And though sleep had been difficult with the afternoon sun always bright and never setting, Mabel was able to fix that little issue with a few cans of paint and a set of heavy drapes. And if that didn't work, there was always another place to sleep.

No, what got to her in the end were the people. Everywhere she went, she found herself face-to-face with another immobilized figure; everywhere she looked, she saw another citizen of Gravity Falls who'd never move again. Most were complete strangers, but as she wandered the streets in search of whatever supplies she needed to get through the day, Mabel always found herself noticing a few familiar faces: Grenda, Candy, Robbie, Pacifica, Wendy, Bud Gleeful, Lazy Susan, Sheriff Blubs, Deputy Durland, even Toby Determined's legendarily uninspiring mug stood out amidst the silent multitudes.

And even though all of them were frozen and always would be, even though their expressions couldn't change and never would, Mabel couldn't shake the feeling that they were watching her.

Judging her.

It was worse at the Mystery Shack: here, the horrified stares of Dipper and Grunkle Ford seemed to follow her inside the house and all the way up to the attic, while Grunkle Stan's bored expression seemed to turn suspicious and untrusting whenever she walked by.

Once, she'd gone so far as to sequester herself in the attic for an entire day just to avoid a glimpse of those motionless faces, but the sight of the vacant bed across from her had gnawed at her; for a time, she'd tried to pretend that Dipper was there, talking about the day's adventures he'd had with Ford, making her laugh… but the sense of loneliness that stirred up had only made things worse, forcing her out of exile long before hunger could.

Eventually, the guilt and anxiety got so bad that Mabel simply couldn't sleep in the Mystery Shack no matter how tired she was. After that, she made do with "sleepovers" in the few houses with doors left unlocked, snoozing on couches and unoccupied beds in the hope that when she finally awoke, the nightmare would be over. But no matter where she stayed, Mabel found herself driven out by a combination of guilt, loneliness, and a distinct sensation of being Goldilocks waiting for the bears to come home (though that last one might have been the expired milk she'd drank at Grenda's house).

In the end, Mabel finally realized that she'd never find peace anywhere in Gravity Falls: no matter where she went, there'd always be someone – human or otherwise – frozen in place, driving her to madness with their blank staring eyes and their maddening, accusatory silence.

Half-crazed from isolation and lack of sleep, she'd followed the road out of town in a desperate attempt to escape. Less than fifty yards from the highway, however, she found the path blocked by the curving wall of the bubble that now encased Gravity Falls – transparent as air but as solid as a brick wall and effectively unbreakable, as Mabel soon discovered. In her attempts to pierce the barrier, she ruined an entire hardware store's worth of equipment, wrecked the one jackhammer that she'd been able to get working, emptied the power cells of every single weapon in Grunkle Ford's considerable armoury, and wasted a perfectly decent parcel of illegal fireworks; and on every single try, the bubble didn't so much as waver, not even when Mabel went so far as to "borrow" a car from Bud Gleeful's lot and ram it into the barrier for twelve straight minutes. Just as Bill had promised, there was no escaping the time bubble.

 _Well Mabel,_ sneered a hateful little voice in the back of Mabel's head, _It looks like you got exactly what you asked for: just a little more summer in Gravity Falls, and lots more time to spend with Dipper. Make the most of it – you've got eternity!_

That had been the breaking point. As soon as Mabel had gotten back from the barrier, she'd said her goodbyes to Dipper and the others, promising that she'd make thing right somehow – and then made a beeline for the portal to Mabeland, cursing herself every step of the way. It was long, slow journey, made even slower by the fact that she didn't really want to leave, and kept stopping to peek over her shoulder at the receding figures of Dipper and Grunkle Ford. Even when the portal had opened to reveal Mabeland, a vision of enchantment gleaming silver under the moonlight, she couldn't stop herself from looking back – just to remind herself that she could return to the Endless Summer any time she liked.

And once she was back in her palatial bedchamber, lost in the mountain ranges of pillows, buried under a mantle of feather-soft blankets, lulled by soothing background music and drifting gently off to sleep… it was all she could do to keep herself from screaming.

She wanted to hate it here: she wanted to be uncomfortable, revolted and above all else, unable to sleep. If she could have only found it within herself to instinctively hate Mabeland as she had just before she'd left it the first time, she might just have been able to cope with the guilt. But no: in spite of everything that was wrong with this place, she was at peace here, even _happy_. Bill had originally tailored this world to suit Mabel's personality, and even with most of the old whimsy stripped away or militarized, it was still a place meant to make her feel comfortable; why else would he have bothered keeping Waddles here with her?

 _I'll find a way out,_ she thought, as she slowly nodded off. _Somehow, I'll break out and find Dipper, and we'll find a way to stop Bill for good this time._

* * *

The next morning, Mabel awoke from an infuriatingly sound sleep to find that a small army of plush toy servants had arrived to deliver breakfast in bed: pancakes and icecream layered in edible glitter with a side of chocolate-coated strawberries, plus three episodes of Ducktective projected on a screen roughly the size of a football field.

However, sitting just under her plate was a small pile of forms, "to be signed at your earliest convenience" according to the Giant Pelican Butler. Leafing through the paperwork, Mabel found to her horror that the forms were all death warrants: the waffle guards had arrested three citizens caught protesting Mabel and Bill's dual rulership, and all three of them – Skydiver Kangaroo, The Huggable Sea Anemone and Rollerskating Panda – were to be hanged as soon as their paperwork was completed. Worse still, Mabel was expected to be in attendance, not only to watch every single minute of the execution as it played out, but to actually deliver a speech warning the population of "the deadly consequences of disloyalty."

As soon as the servants had left, Mabel dipped the paperwork in chocolate sauce and fed it to Waddles.

She knew this execution could only be the first of Bill's tests, and she wanted no part in it. Yes, the people she was being asked to execute probably weren't real, but after befriending two figments of her imagination _and_ fighting alongside Rumble McSkirmish, Mabel wasn't about to start killing fantasy people just because she'd been ordered to. And yes, Bill had offered her the chance to see Dipper again, but by now she knew for a fact that Bill couldn't be trusted even if he was being honest: no more agreements, no more deals, especially with suspicious people in goggles. If she was ever going to see Dipper ever again – or any of her friends and family for that matter – she'd have to find her own way out of Mabeland.

So, once she'd finished wolfing down her own breakfast, she got up and started looking for escape routes. She'd been warned very pointedly that stepping out of line would be punished immediately, but after an entire week of petty theft and soul-crushing silence, Mabel wasn't interested in playing along with the rules. Fortunately, Bill had been true to his word in returning her power over Mabeland: all she had to do was wave a hand at the ceiling, and the roof unfolded into a massive spiral staircase heading directly upwards; bit by bit, she extended the palace tower until it was more than double its original height and its spire almost brushed the dome of the sky. Then, she gathered Waddles up in her arms, and began ascending the stairs towards the waiting clouds.

Given just how much Mabeland had changed, escaping probably wouldn't be as simple as finding the border of prison bubble and just bursting through it, but she had to at least give this method a try. So, as soon as she'd reached the top of the staircase (and set Waddles down on the landing), she conjured a needle-sharp lance from the guardrail, slowly extending it into the air; for perhaps thirty or forty feet it travelled, until it finally touched the prison bubble's membranous wall. But instead of bursting apart like it had the last time, the bubble remained intact, and the wall itself didn't so much as budge. Mabel gave the wall a sharp jab with the lance, hoping that she'd at least leave some kind of a dent in it; all she ended up doing was snapping the lance in half.

 _Okay, so bursting the bubble the old-fashioned way obviously isn't going to work. Question is, what will? And how much can I get away with before someone notices?_

Drawing upon all the power she could command, she conjured a massive angle grinder about the size of Grunkle Stan's car and launched it into the wall of the prison bubble with an ear-splitting shriek of metal on stone, sending a veritable waterfall of sparks cascading across the electric-blue sky. Five minutes later, the grinder snapped clean in half, but the prison bubble was still completely unscathed.

Lips pursed in frustration, Mabel transformed her lance into a neon-pink guided missile and hurled it at the bubble wall; she was immediately rewarded with a spectacular explosion and a vivid display of lights to rival any illegal fireworks display, but once again, the barrier didn't so much as wobble.

Gritting her teeth, she remoulded the tower once again, summoning two massive arms from the exterior brickwork and sent them flying fist-first into the bubble; for twenty straight minutes, she pummelled at the wall with all the strength the arms could muster, but after both hands snapped off at the wrists, she was forced to admit defeat.

By now fighting the urge to use some of Grunkle Stan's more colourful expletives, Mabel tried the last and most unlikely trick in her repertoire: focussing all her willpower on the wall of the bubble ahead of her, she shouted "OPEN!"

Nothing happened.

"I want out!" she hollered.

Still nothing.

"Hello? I-don't-want-to-be-here-anymore! I want to be back in the real world with my brother!"

By way of an answer, a single cloud drifted past the landing: Mabel wasn't sure, but it looked suspiciously like a hand flipping the bird.

During her last visit to Mabeland, a single command had been enough to restructure the entire landscape: buildings had sprouted up or vanished into nothingness, mountains had ballooned out of the ground like rising bread dough in an oven, trees had bearded the ground with forests a hundred thousand strong, and rivers had flooded the valleys to form seas a hundred thousand miles across.

If a command wasn't going to burst the bubble, nothing would.

So, she scooped Waddles back into her arms and hurried back down the stairs, quietly dreading the inevitable fallout of what she'd just done: unless the citizens of Mabeland were all deaf, blind _and_ stupid, there was no way in heck that anyone could have failed to notice the hullabaloo from the top of the tower.

Sure enough, Judge Kitty was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, accompanied by quartet of waffle guards. Much like the rest of Mabeland, he'd changed: oh, he was still clearly a cat with an adorably oversized head and pink fur, and he was still dressed in the same ridiculous-looking suit and judge's wig that he'd worn during Mabel's first visit, but something about his appearance had been altered ever-so-subtly: his fur had darkened from neon pink to deep magenta; his body seemed less shrunken, his frame slightly taller; his cross-eyed stare was gone, both eyes now focussing on Mabel with a precision that was nothing short of unearthly… and unless she was deeply mistaken, the Judge's paws were now tipped with long, sickle-shaped talons.

"Well," he said briskly. "That didn't take long at all, did it? Bill told us to expect an escape attempt or two, but you're quicker off the mark than even he suspected: he thought you'd at least wait until _after_ the execution-"

"-which I'm still not going to, by the way," Mabel interrupted.

"Non-negotiable, I'm afraid. If you want to stay here, then you have to play by the rules Bill established."

"But I _don't_ want to be here! I thought we'd just established that!"

Judge Kitty took a deep breath. "Let me just rephrase that. Mabel, you were given the option of choosing your prison, and you were told – quite succinctly – that you'd have to operate to a very strict set of instructions in each one; the location might change, but the sanctity of the law _doesn't_. If you want to be imprisoned _here_ and not in the Land of Endless Summer, then you've got to obey the rules: no escape attempts, no unhappiness, and above all else, _no empathy_. If you can't behave yourself, then you'll be punished as often as it takes for you to learn your lesson… starting right meow."

He cleared his throat. "Dippy Fresh? Restrain her, if you please."

Mabel had barely enough time to set Waddles down before _something_ crashed into her at high speed with an earsplitting scream of "WIGGITY-WIGGITY WAZZUP?!", knocking her off her feet and slamming her hard against the carpet. Mabel tried to fight back, to grab her attacker and freeze him in mid-air, to turn the floor around her to quicksand, to bring down the ceiling on top of him, but nothing happened: her powers were gone once again. A moment later, she felt the distinctive chill of metal around her wrists, and realized she'd just been handcuffed.

"Captive cuffed and ready for desquarification, dude-judge! High five!" cackled a familiar voice.

"Good. Now, get her upright."

Cold hands seized her by the scruff of her neck, hauling her to her feet so violently that Mabel felt her back give an unpleasant pop, and shoving her into the waiting arms of the waffle guards. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed that figure who'd grabbed her was indeed Dippy Fresh, but like Judge Kitty, he'd changed in his own strange and disturbing way: instead of the cooler replicas of Dipper's real clothes, he wore a pitch-black officer's uniform, complete with medals, epaulettes and a pair of boots so shiny they probably would have gleamed in the dark like miniature spotlights. And though he still wore his usual cap backwards and his familiar sunglasses just low enough for Mabel to see his eyes, not a shred of colour remained in either of them… and looking past the pitch-black shades, she saw that his irises of his eyes now glowed a fiery orange – just as they had before Mabeland had begun disintegrating.

"As you can see, Bill's instituted a few important changes meownd here," said Judge Kitty. "Dippy Fresh is our new chief of security; more specifically, he's in charge of keeping you on your best behaviour, and he will remain in this position until such time as you're able to obey the rules without even thinking."

"And what about you?" Mabel snarled. "You're calling the shots all of a sudden?"

A distinctly smug smirk etched itself across Judge Kitty's face. "Bill's given me the position of deputy-administrator: as long as you're obeying the rules, I'm your right-hand cat. Step out of line, and I'm in charge until your punishment is over. Now, I advise you to think very carefully about what you do at this afternoon's execution-"

"I told you, _I'm not going to go through with it!_ I don't care what you say or do to me, I'm not killing those people."

"Even if they're not real?"

"I don't care if they're not real! You can punish me all you want, you can even throw me right back in the Endless Summer, but I'm not playing along with you! You can tell Bill that he'd best forget any plans of making me like him: I'm not killing anybody!"

The smirk grew substantially. "Is that so?" Judge Kitty purred. "Well now, that's no problem. I'll understudy for you at the execution while you enjoy today's punishment. We'll just see how long it takes for you to reconsider…"

He waved a paw, and with a flicker of warping reality, an open doorway materialized directly in front of her – a doorway leading off into darkness. From Mabel's vantage point, it looked to be little more than a pitch-black rectangle cut into thin air, a deep well carved in the fabric of the world. Then, before she could get a closer look at what might be lurking in the shadows beyond, the nearest of the waffle guards slammed the handle of his knife into Mabel's back, sending her hurtling through the portal.

She landed heavily, and rose too slowly to reach the door before it slammed shut, plunging her into stygian darkness.

* * *

For the first five minutes, Mabel could only stand there, paralysed with fear as she tried desperately not to imagine what might be waiting for her in shadows that now surrounded her. She couldn't even guess at the space she'd been imprisoned in – for all she knew, this place might literally go on forever and those shadows might just be hiding an army, but there was no way she'd be able to tell: the darkness was omnipresent, impenetrable, all-encompassing, and utterly, _utterly_ lightless; there was no way for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, no tiny glimmer of light on the horizon for her to focus on, just endless, silent void.

Five minutes came and went, and nothing reached out from the darkness to attack her. So, Mabel took a very tentative step forwards, hoping against hope that she wouldn't bump into anything – or anyone; finding nothing, she took another step, and then another, until she was able to slowly advance into the gloom at a halfway decent walking pace. All the same, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she was about to bang her shins against something or stumble into the arms of some waiting monster, and it took a lot of effort to continue her forward stride without losing her nerve.

Eventually, the unending silence got the better of her; she didn't know if anyone was listening, or if by speaking she'd end up bringing the inevitable monster attack down on her head, but after about half an hour of total silence, she was past caring.

"Hello?" she called out. "Anyone there?"

No response.

"HELLO?"

Still nothing.

"ANYBODY!" she hollered, voice on the edge of hysteria.

If anything, the darkness seemed even quieter once the echoes had faded.

For what felt like hours, Mabel wandered the darkness, seeing nothing, finding nothing, and hearing nothing but the sound of her own voice echoing across the void. It seemed that wherever Judge Kitty had sent her, it really did go on forever: she had to have walked for miles on end and she still hadn't bumped into a single obstacle or found the walls of this place (if there were any). There didn't even seem to be a _floor_ here, if that was possible, for though there was definitely something supporting her feet, her hand passed right through it whenever she reached down to investigate. Maybe she was floating in space, drifting aimlessly across a universe without stars or planets – an entire lifeless universe set up just for her.

 _Or maybe I'm in hell,_ she thought. _That's what's supposed to happen to people like me, isn't it?_

Time dragged on, and all fears of meeting something horrible in the darkness gradually faded away, to be replaced by a deep, crushing sense of isolation: being here – in this nowhere place, this emptiness that seemed to stretch into infinity – was so dull, so mind-numbing lonely that after a while, Mabel ended up talking to herself just to break the silence. It was a habit she'd picked up back in the Land of Endless Summer, but back there it had at least felt like someone would answer (it had to Mabel at any rate); here, talking to yourself was just another horrendous reminder of the loneliness. Of course, that didn't stop her from doing so, if only to keep herself from going completely insane… with mixed success, admittedly: at one point, she got into a long and distinctly heated argument with herself over what precise colour the shadows were, and went so far as to threaten violence over the correct use of the term "ultra-obsidian shadow ink mega-basalt gloom."

For a while, she even sang – loudly, reflexively and noticeably off-key – but eventually had to stop once she started listening to the lyrics and realized that she was singing musical numbers from her puppet show.

Eventually, even her attempts to fill the silence failed her, and she was forced to stop talking if only to spare her throat. Soon, she was forced to stop and rest as well, for despite the lack of anything tangible beneath her feet, her heels and legs ached from constant walking. But she couldn't stay still for long, though: for every minute she wasn't moving, the darkness seemed a thousand times more oppressive. At least when she was in motion, the all-pervasive darkness had occasionally made her feel as if she was wandering through some long-lost network of caverns, slowly but surely making her way to the surface; when she stood still, she felt as though she'd been buried alive. If she stood still long enough, she could actually _smell_ the damp earth, hear the distant thud of fresh soil being shovelled onto her coffin, feel the air growing stale and thin as the minutes ticked by…

So she kept walking, too scared to stop for long unless she literally had no other choice. By then, she'd just about lost all sense of time: she could have been walking for days on end, or she could have only been walking for a few minutes. It was impossible to tell: the shadows around her ate what little certainties were left about this place.

More than once, she thought she heard Dipper's voice in the distance – sometimes howling in agony, sometimes angry and accusing, sometimes begging for Mabel's help – but no matter how fast she ran and how far she travelled, she could never catch up with the source of those distant cries. Once or twice, she tried calling out, hoping that Dipper would actually answer her or even follow the sound of her voice, but even if the real Dipper was somewhere out there in the darkness, he never gave any sign that he'd heard her – or that Mabel wasn't totally alone in this bleak, lightness nightmare.

At some point, Mabel started screaming.

She still wasn't sure why; by then, she was so wearied and footsore from roaming the shadows that she didn't even feel in control of her own body anymore: walking was an automatic process, singing and speaking just something her mouth happened to do of its own accord, and even her own anger, fear and desperation seemed out of her control. So Mabel could only watch, reduced to a spectator in her own body as it began to scream louder and louder until every last inch of darkness echoed with the sound.

And then…

Light flooded the void.

Suddenly in control of her own body again, Mabel let out a yelp of pain and crashed to the ground, hands clamped across her eyes. For a moment she could only lie there, eyes struggling to adjust to the blinding light; eventually, the pain receded, and she was able to look out at the world without cringing.

Immediately, she realized she was back in her palatial bedchamber, lying on the floor in a crumpled heap. A duo of waffle guards now hovered over her, one keeping her pinned to the ground with the butt of his knife while his partner undid Mabel's handcuffs; less than a few feet away, Judge Kitty and Dippy Fresh were staring down at her with undisguised amusement.

"It looks to me that you've had an interesting time on the inside," said Judge Kitty. "Are you ready to behave now?"

"…I… _what?"_

"The answer to my question had better be yes, Mabel: you've been in there for over a week. I'd think you'd have enough time to think on your mistakes."

"A _week?_ I… what… what did you do to me?"

"Nothing. All we did was make sure all those troublesome human bodily functions weren't there to distract you and let your mind do the rest. Sensory deprivation's funny like that: a little darkness, some gold-old-fashioned peace and quiet, a few days without mental stimulation, and… well, the human brain turns to so much soggy oatmeal after a while."

"But I heard Dipper's voice!"

Judge Kitty shrugged. "I'm not surprised."

"Was he there? Was he real? _Is he still there?"_

There was a pause, and then a malignant-looking smirk slowly played out across the Judge's features. "He might be… or he might not be," he said smugly. "It's not my job to answer these sorts of questions, Mabel, so I suppose you'll just have to find some way to live with the ambiguity of it all – or go insane. But then again, it's not your problem anymore: the Dipper you heard could have been a figment of your imagination, or he could have been the genuine article. You'll never know, and you'll never _need_ to know. After all, you've got Dippy Fresh."

"But he's-"

"Exactly what you wanted," Dippy Fresh snickered. "Remember? You wanted a better bro, so here I am, dude: cooler, slicker, and more supportive – just like you asked. High five!"

Mabel cringed with guilt, remembering how enraged Dipper had been when he'd first met the "replacement." Looking back, she could only wonder what the hell she'd been thinking on the day she decided she wanted a better brother – and the day she decided it would be funny to let Dipper see it in action… though the simple answer was that she _hadn't_ been thinking at all.

"I take it back, okay?" she all but screamed. "Everything I said about what I wanted, every proclamation I made when I was in charge of Mabeland, _I take it all back!_ I don't want this anymore! I don't want any of it!"

"Oh but you do," the Judge purred. "This is exactly what you wanted the first time you were here, and it's exactly what you want here and now; the only difference is that, this time meownd, you'll have to _earn_ what you want. If you want to be the selfless all-caring little miss messiah you've always wanted to be, that's fine by us: you can enjoy that altruism in solitary confinement – or any one of the _other_ punishments Bill has prepared for you. But when you feel like being honest about yourself, you can reclaim control of Mabeland anytime you please."

"Dudebros!" Dippy Fresh shrieked. "A choice between being miserable and being queen of Mabeland? Do you even have to decide, Mabes? This place is here to make you happy! Who cares who has to suffer for it?"

"But-"

"We'll give you a chance to consider things," said the Judge. "In the meantime, no more escape attempts – or you go back in the void for another week. As for the execution, you missed out on the execution this time… but there'll be plenty more in future. You'd best find some time to recover; after all, you never know when you'll be tested next."

* * *

In the end, it turned out that Mabel didn't even need to wait for the next execution to be tested: the "test," if you could call it that, arrived the moment she sat down at her desk to waste time.

By then, she'd been out of solitary confinement for a grand total of five hours, most of which had been spent recovering. With as much time away from her official duties as she could successfully beg for, she'd taken a hot bath, enjoyed a quick nap on the tennis court-sized couch, binge-watched Ducktective, basked in the warm midmorning sun, and cuddled Waddles until she was absolutely certain that she wasn't going to find herself back in the void the next time she closed her eyes. She'd had lunch by then – pancakes marinaded in chocolate and caramel, layered in strawberries, drizzled with maple syrup and thoroughly garnished with sugar – so she decided to make sure that her nerves were well and truly settled by sitting down to a little arts and crafts.

So, she drew upon her powers to conjure up all the supplies she needed: wool, knitting needles, paper, pencils, crayons, glue, paint, clay, wax, plus a few things that could only exist in Mabeland. On her first visit, she'd barely even considered using this stuff, having been too busy skysurfing across clouds of candyfloss or ricocheting down roads in hopelessly overambitious bumper-car games; right now, though, Mabel desperately needed something to clear her head, something that would give her the time and the peace of mind to think of her next move.

She began with drawings – not of her usual fantastic faire, which was pretty much visible at all times in Mabeland – but of the real world and the people she knew there: she drew Gravity Falls before Weirdmageddon, in all its mundane-yet-quirky glory; she drew Grenda and Candy, just as they'd been when she'd first met them – Grenda cradling her iguana in her enormous arms, Candy with her fingers tipped with dinner forks, expressions of purest exuberance on both their faces; she drew Wendy, relaxed and self-assured as ever, with an axe over her shoulder and her vivid red hair flowing behind her; she drew Soos, fresh from the latest round of repairs about the Mystery Shack, wide-eyed with excitement and ready for another adventure; she drew Grunkle Ford, resplendent in his trenchcoat and adventurer's gear, a confident smile on his face and a story of the supernatural ready to tell; she drew Grunkle Stan in the Mr Mystery suit and fez, his familiar roguish grin softening as she spread his arms wide for a hug; she drew Dipper – _her_ Dipper – with his notebook and well-chewed pen and endless fascination with the mysteries of Gravity Falls, smiling at her over the edge of his notebook just as he'd done on so many past adventures. All these individuals and more she drew in exacting detail, reaching levels of precision she'd previously only achieved when working with wax – until it looked as though the images might leap off the page and come to life.

Once she'd finished drawing, finished venting everything she'd had to vent over what was lost, she set aside her pencils and took up the knitting needles, hoping that a return to comforting routines would be enough to clear her head-

And in that moment, Dippy Fresh burst in through the open window on his skateboard, scattering her work in all directions.

"You're _real_ bad at doing what Bill says, dudebro!" he cackled. "No sadness allowed, Mabes - and that includes no homesickness. This is your home now, so drop the 'tude."

"I wasn't homesick," Mabel lied. "I was just drawing a few-"

"And that's another problem right there! You don't _need_ to draw anymore, dude; as long as you're here, you shouldn't need to make art at all: no drawing, no knitting, no modelling, no painting, no nothing!"

Mabel blinked. "What," she mumbled. "I… what."

"You know what art is, Mabes? It's what squares need to do to make themselves feel better about being squares; it's what losers have to do to feel like winners. People like them, they can only make their dreams real by putting it on paper or canvas or whatever and pretending it's important, when all it means is that they didn't have the guts to go out and take what they wanted, and they didn't have the power to change the world. You're not a square, dude; you don't settle for less: you want something, all you gotta do is wave a hand and make it happen. You know it, Bill knows it, and that's why you're both in charge."

Mabel took a deep breath, hands instinctively bunching into fists, fingernails slowly digging into her palms. "In other words, I'm not allowed arts and crafts anymore," she said quietly.

"You're not allowed to be a square, dudebro. Simple as that!"

"And here I was thinking I was allowed to do anything that made me happy."

"Art doesn't make you happy, remember? It makes you a loser! Besides, you were only doing this because you missed home – no breaking the rules either, Mabes. So, first thing's first, all this-" he indicated the pile of drawings "-has got to go bye-bye."

Mabel thought for a moment. "Aren't _you_ breaking the rules just by existing?" she asked.

For the first time since he'd been willed into existence, Dippy Fresh's effortlessly confident expression went blank. "Do what with the who now?"

"I created you, sure, but that wasn't what I really wanted even back then: I wanted the real Dipper around so I could convince him to stay in Mabeland with me, and I couldn't just make a copy of him, not without feeling like the whole thing was a fake. Plus, I was afraid of what he'd say to me if I made him too close to the genuine article. So I made you – to be more 'supportive' than I thought my _real_ brother could be," she added, barely managing to hide the self-loathing in her voice. "Now, call me crazy but that sounds an awful lot like settling for less… which, by your standards, would make _you_ the perfect example of an arts and crafts project, Dippy Fresh."

"What."

"Sure, you're a lot livelier than most of my earlier works, but when all's said and done, you're just another thing I cooked up because I couldn't change the real world. So you tell me, why shouldn't you just vanish right here and now?"

Dippy Fresh's mouth flapped wordlessly for several seconds, his jaw hanging open in mute incredulity. "That… that's _cheating!"_ he shrieked. "You can't weasel me out of existence like that!"

"Can't I? I thought this place was supposed to make more like Bill – more ruthless, more heartless, more cunning. Don't you think this is something _he'd_ make you do if he couldn't be bothered to just rip your head off?"

"No," said Dippy; he was struggling to recover his cool, but Mabel could easily tell that she'd rattled him badly. "I'm not some cheap knock-off: I'm better than the real thing, just like everything else here. 'sides, you don't get to worm outta this one, Mabes. You're the one getting punished, not me. You wanna make me do anything like that, you've gotta pass his tests and obey the rules. So that means…" He reached over and scooped a handful of drawings off the desk. "This has to go!"

The drawing of Gravity Falls went first, torn right down the middle and scattered into the wastebasket. Then went Grenda and Candy, then Stan, then Ford; finally, Dipper's drawing was torn apart, balled up and spat on. For good measure, the knitting was set on fire and the rest of the craft supplies thrown out the window.

"See?" said Dippy Fresh. "That wasn't too hard, was it? Next time don't dream it, _do it._ "

Mabel smiled. "Alright then," she said calmly.

And without another word, she drew back her fist and slugged Dippy Fresh hard in the nose.

"What was _that_ for?!" he shouted, hands clasped protectively over his face.

"Because I _wanted_ to, of course. Don't dream it, do it, remember?"

Dippy Fresh's expression shifted rapidly from astonishment to outright anger, the emotion strange and distinctly alien to his casually-amiable features. "Alright then," he said, visibly struggling to force a smile back on his face. "Alright then. You wanna make the punishment worse, not my problemo."

"Worse? _Worse?_ How could being locked up in the void for another week possibly be worse?"

All of a sudden, there was a smile on his face once again – not his usual lazy grin but a malicious, hateful smirk. This wasn't the Dippy Fresh she'd created back in her first visit; this was a mocking upgrade on the original concept, courtesy of Bill Cipher. "Weren't you listening, Mabes?" he giggled. "The void's for escape attempts. Wishing for the real world gets you something different…"

He snapped his fingers; once again, the fabric of reality folded open into another doorway – this one a hatchway leading off into a blazing whirl of colours swirling in kaleidoscopic frenzy across infinite space. Halos and coronas blazed across the alien horizon, tributaries of semi-tangible power pulsed and oozed, and tendrils of liquescent energy reached tentatively over the edge of the portal, into Mabeland – making a beeline straight for Mabel herself.

"You want outta here, right? You wish you never made that deal with Bill? You wish you hadn't given him the Rift? Fine. You take a nice long dose of _reality,_ Mabel; see how that works out for ya."

"What are you ta-"

 _ **And then reality shifts.**_

 _Dipper's dead._

 _Less than a week after his thirteenth birthday, a drunk-driver veered off the road and crushed him against a brick wall; Mabel was walking home from school with him when it happened, and the sound of squealing tyres and the sickening_ crack _of splintering bones still echoes across her mind no matter how hard she tries to blot it out. Time and again, the scene replays itself across her nightmares, always forcing her to awake screaming and inconsolable._

 _By now, the funeral's already over. Soos, Wendy, Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan have all said their tearful farewells. The tributes have already been made in the newspapers. Dipper's killer is already in court and will soon be in jail for a very long time. To everyone else, the tragedy is already over._

 _But it will never be over, not to Mabel. She can't erase the moment from her memories, nor can she ever rid herself of her regrets – regret that she couldn't save Dipper, that she never got a chance to say goodbye to him, that she couldn't hold her composure on the day she was called as a witness to the drunk-driver's trial… and perhaps most humiliatingly, that after all their adventures in Gravity Falls, after all the dangers they'd faced together, that Dipper had to die in such a_ mundane _way. In the end, it wasn't a godlike being from another dimension that killed her brother, nor was it a shapeshifting horror or a vengeful ghost – just some nobody who'd decided to down half a bottle of vodka at three in the afternoon and drive home drunk._

 _And this is the worst part, because she can't tell Mom and Dad. She can't explain what happened in Gravity Falls, that Dipper was a hero and deserved so much better; she knows they won't believe her, and the knowledge has left her isolated. The only people who know the truth are back in Gravity Falls, only intermittently reachable by email. In the days following their return home, Dipper was the only one who could comfort her when the burden of secrecy got too much; but now he's gone, and there's nobody to talk to._

 _Now Mabel is alone, and nothing in the world can fill the void left in her life… except –_

 _ **And then reality shifts.**_

 _It's her fourth year at high school, and Mabel is struggling. It's even worse than Wendy led her to believe: by now, she's been outed as the school freak and the other students hate her. Scarcely a week goes by without the other girls ganging up on her for one reason or another: her homework is destroyed, her art projects are ruined, her locker is almost always stuffed with something repulsive, and there's nothing anyone can do about it._

 _Even if the culprits are caught in the act, little things like detention or suspension do nothing to deter them: as soon as the punishments are over with, they go right back to tormenting Mabel as if nothing had happened. There's no explanation for this, no good reason for the girls to despise her so. The nearest thing to justification she gets is_ "maybe if you were normal, you wouldn't be so easy to hate."

 _Dipper fares little better: he's always bruised and black-eyed and miserable, and though the two of them are able to bond for a time over their shared misfortunes, it doesn't last. He's beginning to retreat from the real world, slowly withdrawing deeper and deeper into his work in a desperate attempt to withstand the abuse, and the teachers only encourage this: they can already smell the future academic prestige wafting off their newest prodigy, and all of them want to profit from paving his way to success – even if it means separating him from Mabel. Bit by bit, the Mystery Twins are drifting apart. Soon, Mabel will be all alone, and there's nothing she can do to stop it… except –_

 _ **And then reality shifts.**_

 _She's twenty-two and looking at herself in the mirror. Her body is withered and fail, her skin drawn taught across her bones, her ribs jutting from her chest like grasping claws; her hair's turned brittle, and she's pretty sure it's starting to fall out in clumps; worst of all are her eyes, bloodshot and tired and so very, very lost._

 _She's been crying for hours now, courtesy of the latest humiliation at the office, exacerbated by a HR department unwilling to tolerate complaints about management. She has exactly two hours left until she's supposed to get to work, and even with forty-eight hours without sleep and what looks to be a dose of the flu on the way, she can't afford to ask for a day off: she can't afford to risk dismissal. She hasn't called Dipper or Grenda or Candy or any of her friends for weeks; she hasn't touched her art supplies in over two months; she hasn't even thought of having a life outside work._

 _She's alone. Alone, exhausted and without hope… except for –_

 _ **And then reality shifts.**_

 _Three possibilities, all of them painting a picture of the inevitable tragedy in Mabel's life, had she refused "Blendin's" bargain and resolved the conflict with Dipper amicably. But there are other possibilities – so many more: there is heartbreak, broken marriages, stillbirths, deaths in the family, dashed dreams, failed ambitions, madness, even war._

 _But in each of them, Mabel knows that there is one way to escape from her endless misery._

 _The Rift is still active – hidden but still very much active._

 _In every iteration of this story, Dipper and Ford were able to seal the cracks in its containment shell once and for all… but for all Ford's brilliance, there are still gaps in his knowledge. He doesn't know that the UFO's crew might have foreseen the need for a solvent to dissolve their adhesive; he doesn't know that bottles of the solvent were scattered across the forest when the ship crashed so many eons ago… and he doesn't know that the last surviving bottle was buried under a mountain of rubble just beyond the boundaries of the town he explored so diligently._

 _But Bill Cipher knows._

 _And he is always willing to share such secrets with those who would do his bidding._

 _ **And then-**_

Without warning, the visions pouring into Mabel's brain suddenly cease, leaving her to collapse to the ground in an agonized heap.

"See?" Dippy Fresh said smugly. "Your life would have been miserable without us; all the timelines confirm it. Bill saved you from all the misery you would have had to deal with in the real world… and you want to go back to it?"

Mabel said nothing: she was too busy trying not to vomit.

Dippy Fresh just laughed. "I'll leave you to it, dudebro. No more art in the meantime, yeah? You've got a lot of fun on the way, and we don't need you distracted with all that square business…"

* * *

Three days went by.

Every day, another round of paperwork arrived on her breakfast table, every single form demanding fresh acts of cruelty: eviction notices, arrest warrants, permission slips for torture, formal demands for flesh and blood, and the ever-popular death warrants. Every day, Bill tried to force Mabel to commit an atrocity, and every day, Mabel refused.

And every day, Mabel was punished for it in some new and exotic way: once-mundane furniture turned to solid steel and caged her arms in constricting bands of metal, leaving her trapped for hours on end; the carpet turned to razorblades and needles underfoot, pincushioning her toes a thousand times over; living nightmares escaped from her mind to wreak havoc on the few parts of Mabeland where she could still find peace; her most unpleasant memories surrounded her in an endless tapestry of humiliations and embarrassments, forcing her to relive them over and over again; visions of Bill's new empire trickled across the wall separating her from the rest of the world, giving her a few brief but horrific snapshots of what humanity now suffered under his domain – and sometimes, Bill let her feel just a fraction of the agony all those people now felt.

About the only upside to the whole ordeal was the simple fact that solitary confinement and possible futures never came into play again – if only because those particular punishments were reserved for very particular crimes.

For her part, Mabel did her best to withstand the torment. She knew the terms of Bill's little arrangement, and she'd no interest in playing along with any of it: if the torture got too much, she'd just go straight back to the Land of Endless Summer and stew there for a while until she was ready to continue looking for escape routes in Mabeland.

All the same, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she was just exchanging one kind of torture for another: after all, Gravity Falls in Endless Summer was just as miserable as any of the punishments Mabeland could throw at her.

By the third day, Mabel had the distinct impression that Bill was running out of ideas for the next punishment: the breaks between sessions were getting longer and longer, and though the demented corn chip hadn't shown his face since the start of this sick little game, she could almost sense his presence hovering over Mabeland, _feel_ his anger crackling through the air like a thunderstorm waiting to happen; in fact, she'd sworn she could hear the distant sounds of him grumbling once or twice between punishment sessions. He was looking for something that would finally get her to play along, something that would push her over the edge, but she couldn't imagine what.

Or maybe she just didn't want to imagine.

* * *

On the morning of the fourth day, Mabel awoke from a deep and dreamless sleep to find herself surrounded on all sides by shadows: her bedroom, normally brightly-lit and kept at a downright summery climate, had been plunged into a deep grey twilight not commonly seen outside of rainy autumn sunsets, and was now so cold that Mabel had to drag out an extra blanket just to keep out the chill. Groggy as she was, she knew at once that this was clearly something out of the ordinary: Mabeland had never seen this kind of weather, not even when it had finally collapsed into ruin during her first escape.

By now extremely nervous, she sat up in bed and scanned the room for any sign of imminent threats, to no avail: the bleak grey stormclouds allowed for barely enough light to see the room by, but it also allowed far too many shadows. For all she knew, the room could be filled with monsters and she'd never know it until one of them made a grab for her; by now, she could already tell that this was some new and terrible punishment Bill had cooked up, but she couldn't guess at what it involved.

And then, just as she was starting to wonder just how long it would take for the pain and the suffering to set in, something in the darkness _moved._

For twelve heartstopping seconds, Mabel remained frozen in bed, staring out into the inscrutable gloom.

Then, from just a few feet in front of her, there was a low, rasping cough.

"Who's there?" Mabel whispered.

Deep in the shadows, something let out a weak and decidedly mirthless burst of laughter that swiftly dissolved into another spate of coughing. Eventually, the coughing subsided, and in the ringing silence that followed, a hoarse voice whispered, "Just a toy."

Mabel shivered; something about the voice sounded distinctly familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.

"What…" She took a deep breath. "What do you want with me?"

Another weak, gasping chuckle echoed across the room. "Want is such a strong word, isn't it? I don't think I'm in a position to _want_ anything: I'm a toy, remember?"

"But who are you?"

There was a rustle of ancient cloth somewhere in the darkness; then, from out of the shadows by the doorway, a figure began shambling wearily into the half-light. At first, Mabel thought she was looking at a zombie, for the intruder's body was little more than a scarecrow of tattered grey flesh and crooked old bones, but as it drew closer she realized that the figure was actually alive and breathing – somehow. Its face was horribly mangled: deep trenches had been carved in the withered flesh, diagonal scars criss-crossing the ragged features over and over again; one eye was missing, and the other was almost scarlet from burst blood vessels; all that was left of the nose was a gaping crater.

With all these wounds, this sad creature seemed at first unrecognizable. It wasn't until Mabel took in the distinctive jawline, looked down at this apparition's clothes, and saw those telltale hands propping it up against the wall that she finally realized that she was looking at the disfigured, emaciated form of Stanford Pines.

"Grunkle Ford?" she whispered.

"Maybe," he muttered. "We were all different once. Now we're just his toys."

For a moment, Mabel could only stare in horror, not just at the wounds that had been inflicted on Ford, but at his change in demeanour. Before Weirdmageddon – even during their brief reunion at the Fearamid, in fact – Grunkle Ford had been alive and active in every sense of the word: brilliant, decisive, almost impossibly sure of himself, he'd been the first to act against Bill when he'd arrived in Gravity Falls, and up until Grunkle Stan's last, desperate gambit, she'd never seen him looking demoralized or even defeated. And yet here he was, a ruin of his former self, crushed by despair and all but dead in spirit.

"Wha… what are you doing here?"

"Bill let us out for a bit. We've been looking for you. Can't stay long, though, have to move on: he doesn't like the others getting a look at us – upsets them."

" _We?"_ Mabel echoed. "You mean there's more of you?"

By way of an answer, something in the shadows just beyond the windows _glowed_ faintly, accompanied by a hiss of smoke and the sound of a human voice whimpering in pain. Once again, a mangled figure stepped into the light, quivering and smouldering as he went: burned almost beyond recognition, this new arrival was a mass of scorched clothes, burn scars and so much charred meat; indeed, parts of it were still burning, a few patches of errant flesh still glowing like coals in the darkness. However, though the unfortunate victim's hair had been scorched away and most of the skull had been seared from his skull, his face was still intact for the most part – just enough for Mabel to recognize him at any rate.

"Grunkle Stan?" she whispered.

Stan's only answer was an agonized moan; between whimpers, a few errant tendrils of smoke oozed from between broken teeth. Bill hadn't just burned him, but had done so from the inside-out.

"He's the only reason why we were let out in the first place," Ford said quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"He'd seen what had happened to the rest of us – well, Bill showed him, just to make him suffer a little more. Stanley wanted freedom for all of us, and he wanted us to be a family again… so he made a deal with Bill: he agreed to play along with whatever games were arranged for him, all in exchange for a chance to leave and meet up with the rest of us… so Bill did _this_ to him first."

"That's… that's…" Mabel floundered, unable to find a word to describe what had been done; this was beyond words. "I'm sorry," she said at last.

"Not as sorry as I am," said Ford quietly.

At that moment, Stan let out a loud groan of pain and almost collapsed against the windowsill. All fear forgotten, Mabel leapt out of bed and hurried towards him with a cry of "Grunkle Stan!"

But at the last minute, Ford grabbed her by the collar before she could reach him. "Best not touch him," he whispered. "He's in enough pain already."

"Can't I just-"

"Say hello? Comfort him? Look at his skull, Mabel; look at what Bill did to his eyes."

By now running on instinct, Mabel looked up at Grunkle Stan's scar-framed face, and realized with a thrill of horror that his eyes had been seared bare by the fire: all that remained were milky-grey lumps of jelly sitting limply in sockets haloed with burn scars. And judging by the charred ruins of the rest of his cranium, he didn't even have ears left either.

"That's the joke, you see," said Ford. "He burned him, blinded him, deafened him, left every single nerve ending in his body alight… and then released him into the wild to find a family he couldn't see, hear or touch. The only reason he found us at all was because Bill was… _charitable_ enough to open a portal in front of him; we followed him out one by one, and we've been looking for you ever since."

"You're here to take me with you?"

In spite of herself, in spite of all the horrors that had been inflicted on Stan and Ford, Mabel felt something she hadn't felt in all the time she'd been here: hope. With it came relief – immediate and explosive and without dignity whatsoever.

"Thank you," she babbled pathetically, "Thank you, thank you, thank you! I promise I'll help you, I'll find some way of patching both of you up, I'll make things right, I'll carry things, I'll fetch things, I'll do whatever you need to-"

Ford sighed. "I'm afraid it's not as simple as that, Mabel."

"What do you mean?"

In the awkward silence that followed, Grunkle Stan let out another pained moan. This time, however, he actually managed to force out a few coherent words: _"Why won't he just let us die?"_ he muttered – in a tone of voice suggesting that he didn't expect anyone to answer him.

As expected, Ford didn't.

"Bill won't allow us to stay together for very long," he continued. "He'll only let the reunion last until we've seen everything that's been inflicted upon one another… and then we go back to our little corners of the toybox and wait until he's ready to play with us again. He might play with us gently, or he'll play with us until we break – again; one way or the other, we probably won't see each other again."

"But… but we can't just leave it like this! We've got to find a way out! We've got to find a way to stop Bill!"

"Yes, and look what good that did us last time."

"Oh come on!" Mabel exploded. "You were the first to try and stop Bill back when all this started! You got us to form the Wheel – and it would have worked if we'd been able to get it assembled in time! How can you just... give up like this? There's got to be something we can do, something to hope-"

Ford spread his arms wide, allowing Mabel to take in the sight of his tattered clothes, his wasted frame and shredded flesh. "Hope?" he said bitterly. " _Hope?_ Look around you, Mabel; look at the playground that's been built from the ashes of reality. Do you think there's any room for hope left in this planet? And look at what _we've_ become: we're not even human beings anymore, just toys. Trite amusements for Bill to play with when conquering the universe bores him. That's all the human race is to him now – a race of pliable, pitiful diversions: porcelain dolls, teddy bears, tin soldiers, puppets, call us what you like, but we're all playthings no matter what name you give us. All the world's a toybox, and all the men and women merely toys." He laughed mirthlessly, once again dissolving into a fit of coughing. "No, Mabel. There's no hope here, no chance of escape, no possibility of redemption. There is only suffering… and blind submission to _his_ will."

"Then why did you even bother following Stan out here?"

"Because Bill decided it was time you had a birthday party… and your brother had a present he wanted to give you."

"He's here too? Why hasn't he-"

The look on Ford's mangled face killed the question before she could finish voicing it: even with one eye missing and the rest of his features little more than bloody gristle, Mabel could still recognize the pitying expression on the unfortunate scientist's face.

"I'm sorry, Mabel," he said quietly.

There was a pause, and then from the shadows, there came a muffled shuffling – the sound of something heavy sliding across the carpet towards her. Mabel soon realized that it was a cardboard box almost twice as tall as she was, covered in bright pink wrapping paper and bedecked with gaudy green-and-silver ribbons; because of the box's height, she couldn't see the figure pushing it into the room, though she could just about recognize the bloodied hands gripping its sides. By the time the box finally ground to a halt in the middle of the room, she was already hazarding a guess or two as to who was standing behind it… but then at last the figure stepped forward – and now there could be no doubt whatsoever.

Dipper's body was a hideous patchwork of scar tissue and pallid grey skin, tied together with iron staples and interrupted by tiny patches of skinless red muscle; he was still dressed in the tattered remains of his usual clothes – but that was only because he'd been sewn into them, crude stitches running through the ragged fabric and deep into his withered flesh. Worst of all were his arms and legs: long, barbed hooks had been driven deep into bones of his wrists and ankles, leaving deep craters in his already-tortured flesh – all four of which were now haloed with tiny rings of sickly, gangrenous tissue. Attached to each hook was a long, sturdy-looking thread leading off into the darkness, and with a fresh jolt of horror, Mabel realized that Dipper was once again Bill's puppet.

At long last, Dipper looked up, revealing that his face had also endured the same grisly collaging… except alongside the stitches, the staples, the flayed muscles and the dead, grey, chemically-preserved skin, tiny jagged shards of broken mirror stood out. Unbidden, a horrific image appeared in Mabel's mind – Bill grabbing Dipper by the back of his head in a fit of pique and slamming headfirst into a mirror, again and again and again, until nothing was left of the looking glass but an empty frame and her brother's face was a mosaic of shattered mirror.

Once again, Mabel couldn't stop herself from rushing forward: she knew Dipper had to be in unimaginable pain, and she knew that touching him was about the dumbest thing she could do under the circumstances, but after so many weeks separated from him and the others, Mabel was almost sick with worry. Charging over with a shriek of _"Dipper!"_ she spread her arms wide for a hug-

-only for Dipper to shove her away, his mangled face a mask of hurt and fear.

"Hey! I'm sorry if I hurt you but-"

Instinctively, Mabel reached out to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, only for Dipper to slap her hand aside again.

"Dipper, what's wrong? Why aren't you-"

By way of an answer, Dipper raised his chin ever-so-slightly, revealing a long thin scar stretching from his Adam's apple all the way to his collarbone. The message was clear: he hadn't said anything yet because he _couldn't_.

Dipper reached into his pocket and held out a folded letter, and as Mabel opened it, she recognized – too late – the look on her brother's face: it wasn't despair, like with Ford, nor was it pain, as it was with Stan. Instead, the expression on his face was purest hatred.

 _Dear Mabel,_ the letter read.

 _I know what you did._

 _Bill showed me everything._

 _I didn't have much reason to trust him at first, but after a while he started making too much sense to ignore. I mean, it seemed a little suspicious that the Rift just_ broke _in your backpack by accident after surviving a droid crash. I probably should have wondered when I saw the prison bubble and what was inside it; I mean, why would Bill imprison you in your own dreamworld when he could have easily just left you to rot in Gravity Falls with the rest of us? And I thought it was a little weird that you "didn't remember" the Rift breaking… but I never thought it could have been_ you.

 _I didn't want to_ believe _it was you, but it was. You sold us out. That you didn't know who you were dealing with is no excuse: you bought yourself a paradise with the lives of everyone on Earth and you didn't even have the guts to admit it when we saw each other again. While I was eating things out of dumpsters and trying not to get petrified by the eyebats, you were living it up in Mabeland. While Wendy, Soos and Grunkle Stan were carving out a living from the wasteland, you were ruling a kingdom Bill had set aside just for you. While Grunkle Ford and everyone else in Gravity Falls were petrified and turned into building blocks, you were free to do whatever you wanted. And now you're back here again, this time with_ two _paradises to enjoy while the rest of us get tortured for all eternity. Back when you first arrived in Mabeland, did you ever imagine what might be happening to Mom and Dad when Weirdmageddon reached them? Well, I don't. Bill showed me. He showed me_ everything.

 _Do you remember the puppet show? Do you remember what Bill said to you? "Who would sacrifice everything they'd worked for just for their dumb sibling?"_

 _You said "Dipper would."_

 _I'm tired of being the one who would, Mabel._

 _I wasn't lying when I said I'd give up my apprenticeship with Ford for you. I wasn't just trying to get you out of Mabeland when I got out in front of a crowd and tore my heart out. After the way I screwed things up, I would have given anything to set things right – to make you happy… and nothing hurts more than realizing that you didn't feel the same way. Nothing hurts more than betrayal._

 _Grunkle Ford was right all along: in Gravity Falls, you can't trust anyone._

 _Not even family._

 _I hope you're happy with the way things have turned out… because right now you're only human being in the entire universe who'll ever have a chance to be happy ever again._

 _But it's your birthday, so I suppose I might as well give you one last present for old time's sake: you'll find it in the cardboard box._

Trembling, Mabel looked down at the box lying at her feet. For twelve seconds, she dithered aimlessly about it, too scared to open the lid and see what was inside. But eventually Dipper's baleful glare got the better of her, and she began tearing through the wrapping paper, finally wrenching the lid open.

Inside the box were puppets – hundreds of sock puppets, many of them identical to the ones that she'd made for her puppet show. Somehow, despite being well and truly blown to kingdom come by the pyrotechnics, they were all here on display: Dipper, Mabel, Grunkle Stan, Soos, and the rest of the cast – along with puppets that Mabel herself had never made; for one thing, there was a Grunkle Ford puppet here, a Gideon puppet, a Mayor Cutebiker puppet, a Shandra Jiminez puppet – the entire population of Gravity Falls replicated in sock puppet format.

And sitting atop the pile of puppets was another note:

 _This is us, Mabel,_ it read.

 _This is us in the only form that you'll ever be happy with. The world is your puppet show, now. Enjoy it: you're the only one who can._

 _Goodbye forever,_

 _Your Dumb Sibling_

Mabel looked up, hoping that she'd be able to explain herself, to make Dipper understand that she hadn't meant for this to happy, _to say that she was sorry._

But Dipper was gone, along with Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan. All that remained to mark their passing was the box of puppets.

Suddenly, Mabel couldn't breathe. Everything she'd experienced in the last few weeks of Weirdmageddon seemed to hit her at once – all the fear, the terror, the uncertainty, the anger, the grief, the despair and most of all, the guilt; all of it descended on her – and enveloped her.

She knew it was possible that Bill had faked the reunion, that Dipper was unharmed and he didn't know what she'd done, and that everything she'd witnessed had been an illusion cooked up to torture her. But she couldn't tell: certainty was for people who could trust their senses, and Mabel couldn't even trust _herself_ at that point.

But even if the Dipper who'd written the letter had been nothing more than smoke and mirrors, it didn't matter: he'd been right about her. Everything the letter said was correct: she'd sold out the world for a chance at happiness, and she'd lived in luxury while Gravity Falls had suffered under Weirdmageddon; and while other playthings endured the most horrific tortures, she was being groomed to become as big a monster as Bill. She was a horrible person, and no matter how many times she'd told herself that she wasn't selfish and didn't _want_ to be selfish, the simple fact was that she deserved every punishment she received.

Very slowly, she collapsed to her knees, slumped to the floor, and curled herself into a ball.

And there, lying on the carpet in the darkness and silence of her tailor-made prison, Mabel began to cry.

* * *

A/N: Coming up next - a meeting of the minds, and salvation found in dreams! Any guesses? Feel free to theorize!


	14. Awakening To Absolution

A/N: And I'm back, ladies and gentlemen, and with a clean bill of health for the time being! Of course, I'm already being set up with a schedule for future hospital visits on the grounds of "just to be on the safe side," but for now I'm just glad that I'm on the mend, that I made the decision to seek medical attention when I did, and that I have the newest chapter at long last!

Now, a little change here: I've decided to bring in some codes, just a little something to add a little extra mystery for you to unravel. I wish I could claim that this is some great mark of my intellect, but really, I've just been following in Gravity Falls' footsteps and advice. Far more frightening are my attempts at poetry. This is a trial run, a little Atbash and Caesarian, just to see if this change works out: feel free to furnish me with your opinions as always (Qlsm rh dzgxsrmt!).

Now, before we begin, I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed, favourited, followed and viewed over the last few weeks:

 **Kraven the Hunter:** I loved that dissection of Bill's reasons for not muting Dipper - and what the real Dipper would do. Basically, Mabeland is one big instance of "If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten," designed to make Mabel inflict pain on innocents - and this version of Dippy Fresh definitely doesn't fit the bill. Also, Mabeland is simply a lot more comfortable for Mabel - physically at any rate; the sense of loneliness and associated discomfort is just so miserable that she can't stand it unless she absolutely has to.

 **Northgalus2002:** Don't worry! Mr A will be intervening soon! I can't give away too much, but one of your guesses was bang on the money. Also, without saying too much, I doubt anyone will be escaping from this nightmare with their personalities intact: Mabel may recover, but she's going to need a lot of support... and she won't be alone in that regard. Thanks so much for your words of support!

 **Guest:** I'm so glad you liked the chapter, and I loved your examination of it - descriptions have always been my favourite part of writing. Not too sure if I'd do such a good job if I ever took the reins of Gravity Falls, but I'm flattered that you think it would be interesting. Also, there will be some hope in this chapter - it's still shrouded in shadows, but there's some light at the end of the tunnel. And to answer your question, time is difficult to measure for that very reason: Bill is still in the mood to muck about with time for his own amusement, however, and several games have very specialized time zones - allowing the players to perceive vastly different passages of time; some have only been playing for a few hours, others for centuries. Overall, only a few months have passed in "real" time.

 **ImpossibleJedi4:** Thank you for your support, and thank you for your review!

 **Fantasy Fan 223:** I know, Mabel's a favourite of mine, too. No, really: I'm from the _Farscape_ school of character appreciation, believe it or not. There will be hope on the horizon, however, though as you've said, whether it'll arrive in time to help Mabel back from the precipice or if it'll arrive too late like it did with Fiddleford, I can only cast shadows on the future. However, I will say that, yes, Dipper is with the real Wendy: I think it's best that we get this out of the way before it becomes Schrodinger's plot point. Thanks again for your review and your kind words, and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

 **OMAC001:** I can't wait to see how I _can_ resolve it :)! Thanks for reviewing!

 **FanBoy-Guest:** The whole story is about that, really - a descent into the hells that Bill constructs for the characters and how they resist or succumb to its many torments and temptations.

 **MysticFire348:** Wow, I need to check out this Transcendence AU; I thought I was being too gory all this time, but from the way you describe things, I'm being outdone. Don't worry, though: I'm glad you think I've struck the perfect balance, and I'm glad you think it's a genuine horror story and not just a gory mess. Thanks so much for your review and I hope I continue to impress.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter! Feel free to provide me with opinions, recommendations, corrections, critiques and observations! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: _Gravity Falls_ isn't mine. Neither is the Atbash Cipher (the first and third codes used) nor is the Caesar Cipher (the second).

* * *

Somewhere on the opposite end of the Museum, Stan finally skidded to a halt and paused to catch his breath.

By now, he was sure he'd managed to outrun his Self-Loathing, or at the very least delay it long enough for him to recover from the marathon he'd just ran. He'd been careful to bolt most of the doors between the two of them, but he had a sinking feeling that they probably wouldn't hold Self-Loathing forever. He couldn't guess at the kind of powers Bill had given the monster, but something told him that doors wouldn't be much of an obstacle to an unofficial Henchmaniac. And if that didn't work, there were other ways around the Museum: he'd only seen a handful of the side-passages that lay between the exhibits, but if there were as many as he suspected, he didn't have long before the old bastard caught up with him.

How long had he been running anyway?

There were clocks in the museum, sure, but none of them showed the same time – or even ran at the same speed: some raced along at a breakneck pace, while others moved so slowly that the minutes seemed to drag on for hours on end. For all he knew, he'd been running for months on end and he'd never know the difference; even his own sense of time seemed warped around here, for every time he tried to count the seconds, he kept losing track of things.

 _Chalk it up to stress, Stan. You're running through a museum commemorating all the screw-ups that you've ever committed in your life, and you're being chased by your own Self-Loathing dressed in the face of your own unpleasable dad. You'd be forgiven for losing track of time under the circumstances…_

Somewhere in the distance, a thunderous howl of rage echoed through the corridor.

 _And on top of everything else, your Self-Loathing doesn't seem interested in just_ talking _you to death anymore. I don't think he's carrying around that razor just for the sake of giving that five o'clock shadow a trim, do you?_

Stan hastily double-checked the chain on the door behind him. Judging by the volume of those enraged screams, his pursuer was still making his way through the neighbouring wings of the Museum, either navigating the side passages or punching his way through the obstacles Stan had left in his path. Hopefully, that would give Stan enough time to catch his breath, maybe even plan his next escape route.

Unfortunately, escape didn't seem terribly likely at this point: by sheer bad luck, he'd ended up at a cul-de-sac in the Museum's layout; the only way in or out of this exhibit were the double doors he'd just chained and bolted behind him, and retreating through them would leave him on a collision course with Self-Loathing.

There _had_ been a door just the outside entrance marked "EMPLOYEES ONLY," but it had been locked and couldn't be broken down. In all likelihood, it was only there to get his hopes up just so Bill could knock them over again.

Not that there was much hope to be found here and now – not with the room he'd found himself in.

According to the banner above the door, this exhibit was "THE PRICE OF FAILURE: A STUDY OF CONSEQUENCES," and it consisted of a long, meandering aisle lined with dioramas much like the other exhibits in the museum. Up until now, Stan had been too busy trying to find an exit to pay much attention to the contents of the room, but as the impossibility of escape gradually sank in, he found himself slowly but surely drawn to the display cases. And with nothing left to do but wait, now there was no ignoring them.

The first diorama showed Dipper lying motionless in the crumpled wreckage of a golf cart while Mabel was dragged away by a horde of Gnomes; some distance away behind the wall of the Mystery Shack, Stan gleefully bamboozled the crowd of tourists, oblivious to the carnage outside. According to the plaque, _"Though rushed to Gravity Falls Hospital, Dipper's injuries proved too severe, and he died of internal haemorrhaging that afternoon. Despite an extensive search of the forest, Mabel was never seen again. In the weeks that followed, Dipper and Mabel's parents severed all ties with Stan, blaming him for the loss of their children…"_

Unable to read another word, Stan lurched away from the display, gorge rising as he did so. By now, he could already tell what this exhibit commemorated, and he wanted none of it whatsoever; but in his rush to hurry away from the awful sight, he all but tripped over another diorama – and before he could stop himself from examining it, his eyes were already taking in the horrific details. Here was the basement lab, right after the Portal had been activated early that summer… but there was no sign of Ford emerging from it. Instead, Stan and Soos wept despondently over Mabel's body, crushed almost beyond recognition by a fallen bank of machinery. On the opposite side of the portal, Dipper tumbled aimlessly through the void, now trapped alongside Ford.

This time the plaque was much more acerbic: _"By the time Stan had recovered from witnessing the consequences of his own stupidity in action, the portal activity was already beyond his control, and a rift had formed in the fabric of reality. Weirdmageddon began early, this time with Dipper and Ford as prisoners of Bill and the only guaranteed means of stopping him destroyed. Crushed by his failures – though obviously not quite as badly as Mabel – Stan wandered out into the wastelands of Gravity Falls to die. Nobody mourned his passing."_

For over a hundred yards, the monstrous procession of displays continued, Stan stumbling from diorama to diorama at random like a drunk: here was Dipper, Soos, Mabel and Wendy lying dead in the ruins of Ford's underground bunker while the Shapeshifter roamed freely in Dipper's form, tailing Stan with a murderous grin on its face; here was the Lake Monster consuming the twins' drowned corpses; here was Dipper – still in his reverend costume – lying dead at the foot of the water tower, a grief-stricken Mabel making a deal with Bill in a desperate attempt to revive him; here was Gideon exalting over Dipper's lacerated corpse, Mabel handcuffed and gagged behind him; here was a fire at the Northwest Mansion, Dipper and Mabel lost to the flames before the firefighters could arrive… There was a whole section on Weirdmageddon alone: Dipper eaten by Teeth; Dipper starving to death in the ruins of Gravity Falls; Dipper, Mabel, Wendy and Soos trapped forever in the prison bubble.

And above each diorama, a single sentence had been roughly carved into the wall: "WHERE WERE YOU, STAN?"

But of course, Bill had left the worst for last: it depicted a Mystery Shack that never became the Shacktron and remained Stan's private fiefdom; here, Dipper and Mabel, unable to change their Grunkle's mind and unable to rally the survivors, were killed in riots over food shortages while Stan – the Chief now dethroned by the angry mob – wept despondently over their trampled remains.

There was no graffiti overlooking this diorama, only a plaque large enough to double as a traffic sign.

" _How long did you spend trying to save Ford,"_ it asked, _"and you weren't even there to save_ them? _They had to save themselves. Do you think Ford was any different? Do you think he_ really _needed your "help?" Do you think you've actually saved anyone, or are you ready to face the fact that everyone in the world would be better off without you?"_

And below that…

" _You're no saviour, Stan Pines. You're a man who succeeds only in order to fail. You're a joke that stopped being funny a long time ago. People keep throwing you out, but you keep crawling back like the parasite you are, trying to pick up the pieces of a broken reality and make things right again when nothing can ever be right again. You killed the world, Stan. You think you can make_ that _right? Do yourself a favour and end it all."_

Trembling, Stan sat down heavily on one of the couches overlooking the last diorama, and let out a sigh that felt as though it had been waiting the last thirty years to escape.

In the distance, another infuriated roar echoed up the corridor – this time much closer. Stan was halfway through getting up reinforce the door when a realization hit him – one that had been building up ever since he'd arrived in this exhibit.

Why the hell was he still running when there was nowhere to go? Even if he could force the employees-only door open, he was already worn out from running across the museum and probably couldn't manage another marathon jog to whatever exhibit could shelter him next, assuming there was one. As for thoughts of escaping, where could he escape _to?_ He'd passed the foyer on his last sprint, and the front doors were sealed shut – and once again, even if he could get them open, he'd just be escaping into another part of Bill's world.

Bill had already won. Why was Stan still running and fighting and refusing to succumb to the inevitable? Why hadn't he just…

…just…

The razor flickered in and out of Stan's mind, suddenly a thousand times more inviting than any other form of escape he could imagine.

Then, he remembered the message from "Mr A" that had briefly appeared before him back in the first exhibit: _don't give up,_ it had said. _Help is closer than you think._ What the hell had that meant? Where exactly was this help supposed to be, and how would they reach him? And what about those cryptic instructions?

 _There will be a dream: he'll reach out to you if you reach out to him._

Okay, fair enough. But who was he supposed to reach out to? _How_ was he supposed to reach out? Was this a real fall-asleep-and-dream dream, or one of those annoying figure-of-speech dreams that Ford sometimes talked about? Or was it a dream made real by Weirdmageddon, something that would literally appear in the museum itself? Was a dream actually supposed to rescue him? Dear God, why had the message been so needlessly vague?

 _Wait for the dream._

"Easy for you to say, knucklehead," Stan grumbled.

Once again, he sighed and thought for a moment. Maybe, just maybe, he needed to sit down for a bit and recover his strength. After all, he'd been running for hours on end, and if he was going to keep on running – or maybe even try to once again fight back against his Self-Loathing – he needed to get a bit of breath back in his lungs.

So, he rose from the couch and sat down between two of the largest displays; with any luck, they'd be enough to hide him once Self-Loathing finally broke in, though given that the room was essentially an aisle, it wasn't as if the bastard would have to look for very long to find him. Hopefully, it'd buy him some time to prepare for the next mad dash.

 _Practically guaranteed,_ Stan thought wearily. _With the racket he's making out there, I'll hear him long before he's through the door. I probably won't have much of a chance to get past him or ambush him, but maybe it'll be enough to… maybe… whu…_

To his surprise, Stan found himself yawning, his eyelids fluttering as he settled back against the wall. Blinking furiously, he gave himself a little shake. _Can't nod off now,_ he told himself. _Gotta keep my eyes open. Gotta stay awake. Gotta be ready for him. Even if I'm supposed to wait for a real dream, I can't afford to count sheep now; dreaming can wait until Self-Loathing's dead or out of reach. Just gotta stay awake for a little longer. Gotta stay…_

… _ah, screw it._

* * *

Somewhere on the outermost fringes of Bill's anarchic domain, Axolotl pensively surveyed the scenes.

From here, in his position just about the splintered remains of the moon, all the Earth was visible: a vast, impossible pandemonium of a planet, haloed with pulsing rings of Weirdness slowly rippling ever-deeper into space, its Arctic Circle nothing more than a jagged crown of broken rock overlooking the molten core of the world, its surface pockmarked with massive craters like vacant sockets. Even its basic shape had long since ceased to exist, and now its crust oozed and twisted in all directions and all possible forms as Bill Cipher's mad whims rained down it.

And across the cracked shell of what had once been Earth, the world itself was divided into over a hundred billion kaleidoscopic playgrounds for Bill's twisted amusements. Each tiny scale of unreality was its own private world, its own pocket dimension, complete with its own unique environment, weather, and physical laws – even its own time-flow. Here was the Land of Endless Summer, the Labyrinth, Fort Acheron, Mabeland, the Dollhouse, the ruins of Gravity Falls, the Museum, the frozen wastes, the City of the Winky Frown, the Manufactory, and all the other cosmic rumpus rooms that Bill had crafted. And above it all, the Fearamid orbited, looking down upon the sordid dramas unfolding below with sickening amusement.

To human eyes, this collage of playgrounds would have been a maddening, sanity-shredding vision of hell, barely possible to comprehend and just about impossible to describe: it was at once a layer cake of realities, with one pocket dimension vertically stacked on top of another, but it was also a chainmail, with each playground part of an horizontally interlocking network of games; and yet it was also a pyramid, an icosahedron, a grand piano, a roulette wheel, an exploding pack of tarot cards, a set of revolving doors, a puppet theatre, a game board spanning infinite space crammed into the finite surface of a broken planet, and it was all of these things just as it was none of these things.

Fortunately, the Axolotl wasn't human, and as such, the nature of this cosmic latticework was easily comprehended, though it left his current vessel with an even bigger headache than usual. True, he wasn't as omniscient as he used to be, and there were limits to how much he could see of each playground without seriously straining himself, but he could see enough; he could see what _mattered_.

At that very moment, Bill's attention was focussed entirely on Dipper, and judging by last few days of madness that had unfolded in that particular playground, he probably wouldn't be diverting his attention for a while yet.

The fetters that this dimension had forced on Axolotl's powers were still strong enough to keep him from acting against Bill directly… but with an effort of will, he could resist these bonds just long enough to exert the tiniest fraction of his omnipotence. Most of this was reserved for travelling between the playgrounds, leaving the letters and keeping himself hidden; now that the puppeteer's attention was diverted from the stage, however he could force the tiniest thimbleful of influence upon the structure of the game board.

Reaching out with all the power he could safely draw upon, he seized one of the less-than-nanoscopic threads of reality that composed the Museum, slowly dragging it out until it was within reach of the other scenarios. Then he plunged the thread deep into the fabric of the Labyrinth, forming a bridge between the playgrounds – ethereal and not quite tangible enough to safely travel across just yet, but present all the same. Slowly, Axolotl refined the passage, strengthening the barriers and fortifying it against the Weirdness Waves that buffeted the exteriors of this little playgrounds, until the bridge was stable.

Unfortunately, the finishing touches were beyond his power, and not just in the literal sense: making the final connection between the two scenarios from here would alert Bill to the tampering. No, these links could only be made from _inside_ each prison, by their inmates.

Connecting minds was much easier than connecting worlds, and by intrinsic nature, families always shared a subtle connection across the Mindscape, twins especially so. More to the point, both participants were already dreaming: Stan had long since succumbed to exhaustion, and Ford was still roaming the Oneiron's Labyrinth – a place of waking dreams and constant nightmares.

He knew this would not be pleasant: he could tell that Ford had been in his current dream for a considerable span of time, and thanks to the stimuli at play in this particular scenario, introducing Stan to it would be emotionally distressing for both of them. After all, Bill had used similar sights in his attempts to break Mabel's spirit… but perhaps it was appropriate that such breaking stimuli could be used to free instead of imprison.

All he had to do was briefly interweave Stan's thoughts with those of Ford's, and wait…

…and hope that they had been paying attention.

* * *

Not for the first time in his life, Stan could only wonder what the hell had just happened.

 _Where am I?_

As far as he could tell, he was standing in the middle of a huge and extremely draughty room, with stark white-tiled floors and sterile white walls as far as the eye could see. This was apparently some kind of hospital, but he'd be damned if he could tell if anyone was still being treated here, for the place was intolerably gloomy; the only light to be found in the entire room was from a rattling fluorescent bar set directly above him, barely bright enough to keep the dark at bay. Peering into the gloom, he could just about recognize the faint shapes of other light fixtures dangling from the ceiling, but unfortunately there wasn't much point blundering around in the darkness trying to find the on-switch… not when there could be just about anything waiting for him in those shadows.

 _How did I get here?_

Well, it seemed as though that was going to remain a mystery for now, because nothing made sense at this point: the last thing Stan could remember was walking along Glass Shard Beach in the blazing heat of summer; he'd been marvelling at how little the place had changed in the last few decades and holding up an umbrella to shield him from the hailstorm of Hot Belgian Waffles and Simple Ricks wafer cookies pouring down on him… and then he was here.

 _And for my third question-_

"Who's there?"

The voice was so sudden and so soft that, for a moment, Stan wondered if he'd heard it at all: perhaps it had been his imagination, something conjured up by the cold and dark.

On instinct, however, Stan hastily ducked out of the light and sank into the shadows beyond the fluorescent glow, hoping against hope that whatever was waiting out there couldn't see him crouching in the darkness.

Thirty heart-stopping seconds went by, and nothing happened. Maybe the voice had been his imagination after all; either that, or he'd succumbed to the inevitable and called out on his own – which was, of course, a stupid move. Having made the same mistake while wandering through a park at midnight, he knew for a fact that calling out "Who's there?" was the spoken equivalent of firing a flare gun, and was usually an open invitation for a chloroform-soaked rag to be clamped over your mouth.

And then, just as he was starting to think it was safe to leave the shadows, he heard the voice again.

"I know you're there," it said. "There's no point hiding. You might as well show yourself."

Stan swallowed hard, every hair on the back of his neck immediately standing to attention. By now he was ready to run if need be, his muscles tensed to launch him as far away from the danger as possible, even though he couldn't tell if this room actually had a door.

"Look," grumbled the voice, "if you're playing games with me, there really is no point: there's nothing left for you can frighten me with, remember? You've already taken away everything that ever mattered to me. So, if you don't mind stepping into the light, we can get this over with before I die of boredom."

Stan pondered this for a moment: here and now, the voice didn't _sound_ especially threatening; if anything, it merely sounded tired and slightly annoyed… but then again, if owner of this particular voice was another one of Bill's creations, as he thought it was, then there was no trusting his senses at this point. The safest thing to do would be to stay still and wait until the thing in the darkness lost interest.

But why did the voice sound so familiar?

"Have it your own way. I think I can just reach the light switch from here…"

A moment later, there was a muffled click from the shadows, and suddenly the entire room was flooded with harsh white light.

At first, Stan could only recognize the vague shapes of emaciated limbs and trunks shifting under the merciless glare of the fluorescents, but his eyes adjusted to the sudden change in light, more details became apparent: there was a throne, a crude chair of rough concrete and corroded metal; there were machines, smothered in soot and befouled with dirt, but clearly still providing life support; there was intravenous tubing jabbed deep into withered flesh; and peering from beneath the tattered mantle of rags atop the throne, there was a human face – haggard, fishbelly-pale and pockmarked with about a dozen faded scars, but still undeniably human.

There was a pause, as the apparition's bloodshot eyes finally focussed on Stan.

"Aha," it said, wearily. "A visitor." In spite of itself, the creature offered a painful-looking smile. "It's good to see you again, Stanley."

For almost twenty seconds, Stan could only stare as he tried desperately to process what he was looking at. _"Ford?"_ he said at last.

"Hmm. I think so, at least. You'll pardon me if I don't get up: Bill's made sure of that."

Stan's eyes very slowly strayed to base of the throne, and realized with a fresh thrill of horror that Ford was missing his legs: severed roughly just above the knee, they were now little more than bloodless pair of malformed stumps dangling limply over the edge of the throne. Stan wasn't exactly an expert on surgical amputation, but he had the distinct impression that this maiming had happened _years_ ago. A quick glance upwards revealed that Ford was missing his left arm, too; his one remaining limb was chained to the throne, barely allowing him freedom of movement to reach the light switch.

"Holy mother of God," Stan whispered.

"I know," said Ford, a faint smile gracing his ashen features. He chuckled weakly. "I guess they thought the only way they could keep Daedalus down was by clipping his wings."

"They _cut your legs off, Ford!"_

"Please, there's no need to shout, Stanley. Besides, it's not as if he didn't break my spine first: after I stopped feeling anything below the waist, amputating limbs was just a formality. I suppose I should be grateful that Bill decided to spare me the effects of gangrene. And anyway, I guess I'm only _half_ a freak now, am I right?" He grinned and waved a hand through the air, mirthlessly indicating his six remaining digits.

Stan's mouth flapped wordlessly for twenty seconds. He was beyond speech, now; he couldn't even _think_ of a response. In the ringing silence that followed, he could only stare and try to review everything he'd just seen: on some dim and distant level, he knew that Ford was being just a little too blasé for the situation; true, his brother had always been unbelievably casual around the strange and disturbing, even during the depths of Weirdmageddon, but this was extreme even by his high standards.

Not only was he treating the loss of all but one of his limbs as a minor annoyance, but he'd barely reacted to Stan's arrival. After all, the last time they'd seen each other, he'd been dying and Ford had been in tears. Even if he'd somehow guessed that Bill was going to bring Stan back from the dead, he would have expected a bit more of an emotional reaction… and there was something about the glazed look in Ford's bloodshot eyes that gave Stan the distinct impression that something wasn't quite right upstairs.

"How long have you been here?" he asked quietly.

"Hard to say. I can barely recall the day I arrived, much less the timespan… though I think something might have been happening _before_ that, something involving a labyrinth and making wishes, but I can't remember much of it. Maybe it was just another dream. I tried to keep a tally of days I've been here, but I ran out of wall space quite some time ago. If I had to guess, I'd say I've been staying here for at least a hundred years."

" _What?"_

"Give or take a few extra decades – or a few less. Maybe it's been a hundred thousand years, or maybe it's only been a hundred minutes. I can't tell anymore. Time's hard to measure when your jailer can rewind and fast-forward it at will… but then again, it's not as if you could ever measure infinity. Not that I didn't try. It was easier when the other hallucinations were about, believe me." A tortured-looking smile brightened Ford's face. "Just as well you're here, isn't it?"

"Other hallucinations? What other hallucinaaaaaa…." Stan paused, voice slowly trailing off as the last few seconds of rambling finally trickled into place." Hang on," he said. "Hang _on._ Back up _just a goddamn minute_ : you think _I'm_ a hallucination?"

"Well, after eight hundred and fifty-seven consecutive visits from various illusory friends and family members, pattern recognition starts to set in… but you're welcome to stay, of course. After all, I doubt I'll get any more visitors after this."

Stan took a deep breath as he struggled to maintain his grip on the conversation. "Ford," he said, scarcely bothering to hide the desperate edge to his voice, "This is crazy. This is absolutely bonkers, and you know it. I'm not a hallucination, or imaginary, or whatever you want to call me. I'm your brother, and we've known each other for our entire lives, give or take thirty-odd years of separation. I'm _real._ " For emphasis, he prodded the legless figure hard in the shoulder. "You feel that? Does that feel imaginary to you?" He reached out and grabbed Ford's remaining hand, grasping the mangled palm firmly in his own. "You see? I'm here, and I'm real. Do you wanna leave it at that, or do I have to bring up all the childhood accidents and adventures that only I'd know about?"

Once again, Ford could only offer a pained and slightly-saddened smile. "I really missed that attitude of yours. I still do, in a way. But I'm afraid there's nothing you can say that can convince me that you're any more real than the other visions, hallucinations and illusions I've experienced in my time down here. I've seen so many over the past few years that I can't even distinguish fantasy from reality anymore: maybe the labyrinth was all a dream and this is the waking world, a world populated by nightmares made flesh… or maybe this is the dream and I've found another layer to the hell Bill created for me. I can't tell, I honestly can't tell. And… well, as much as I appreciate your attempts to apply some logic to this game, it really doesn't work down here: the other imaginary people who visited me all knew things that only their real counterparts would know, and they could all exert force if need be – and they often did. You see, Bill's been watching the human race for millennia on end, and he's stored away a sizeable cornucopia of information… and now that he's the master of our reality, there's nothing to stop him from summoning up every single phantom of the human mind and bringing them into physical existence – just to make sure I know how badly I failed. In the last few visits, I've seen Dipper, Mabel, Fiddleford, Soos, Wendy – even Mom and Dad – and they've all done their part to remind me of my follies. And now you're here, so…"

He shrugged. "I suppose that completes the game. So come on, then, get it over with: tell me everything you've ever wanted to say to me but couldn't for fear of upsetting the kids. Tell me I'm a lunatic. Tell me I'm a dangerous know-it-all. Tell me I betrayed my family and left you to spend your days on the run or in prison. Tell me I should never have been allowed out of Glass-Shard Beach. Tell me I'm the worst excuse for a brother in history. Go on, say what you want to say." There was a slightly manic edge to his voice, now. "Hit me, if that's part of the game plan. Break out the knives and carve off another slice if you feel like it. I've more than earned my suffering by now, I think."

Stan took an even deeper breath. This was bad: he'd thought he'd seen Ford at his most deranged before, back on the day he'd first stumbled into Gravity Falls; this, however, was something much, _much_ worse. "Ford," he said tentatively, "if all the hallucinations were solid and had the same memories as the real McCoy… so what? I could the one genuine human being that snuck into the game. So just suppose, for the sake of argument, that I'm the real Stanley Pines. Do you have any proof that I'm not your brother?"

Ford's desperate smile collapsed. "My brother's dead," he said quietly.

"…I'm sorry, what?"

"Stanley Pines died in the Fearamid a very long time ago. He was trying to save the world from my mistakes – because I was gullible enough to accept Bill's bargain the first time. But because I was foolish enough to choose conflict over resolution at very moment we could have finished the Circle, Stanley died that day. Bill let him linger for a good long while, you see: he made me watch as he slowly bled out, made sure I felt the moment that his heart stopped. And then… when he brought me here, Bill brought Stan's body to stay with me. He made sure I could see it for every hour of my imprisonment: he wanted me to watch as the body rotted away, to take in the smell of decomposition, to witness everything that made him recognizable as human being just… vanishing. Eventually, all that was left was his skeleton… and even Bill got bored with that after a while. So you see, friend, you're not the real Stanley; you can't be him, because he's dead – because of _me._ "

Stan had heard enough: he didn't know how he'd gotten here, he didn't know where this prison was, and he hadn't the slightest clue if there was some kind of safe haven nearby, and frankly he didn't care. All that mattered was ending this madness right now, before it got any worse.

"I'm getting you out of here, Ford," he said solemnly.

"Aha." That deranged smile again. "Yes. That's just what Dipper said, on his first visit. He unlocked my restraints, told me he was here to rescue me… but then he showed me what Bill had done to him – what was left of him – all because of me. You'll pardon me if I don't play along, but this little game of yours depends on me having hope to spare, and I'm running a little low on that particular commodity."

"Look, what do I have to say to make you believe me? I'm not trying to trick you, torture you, or reveal that I've been tortured or whatever else you're worrying about: I'm the real Stan Pines and I'm here to rescue you!"

Ford sighed. "I hate to sound like a broken record, but just about every other vision I've experienced in the last few days insisted that they were the real deal as well. What makes you different from all the other real Dippers and real Mabels and real Fiddlefords I've met in the last few years?"

"Alright then, smartass, then why haven't I showed up before up until now? If all this was set up just to torture you, then why haven't I appeared until today?"

"I imagine because Bill was saving the worst for last: he thought that, after making me watch Stanley die the first time, bringing him back as an illusion would hurt me more than any other vision he'd subjected me to." He smiled, and for the first time, Stan saw tears in those bloodshot eyes. "He was right."

"Ford-"

"I wish you really were here, Stanley," said Ford quietly, "just so I could tell you how sorry I am. It should have been me that day: it was my screw-up, and nobody else should have had to pay for it but me… but you did. Time and time again, people have been paying for my mistakes, my gullibility, my paranoia, and my obsessions. I didn't want to get anyone involved in my problems, but I did: sometimes it was because I was lonely, sometimes it was because I didn't know how to deal with the madness I'd stirred up on my own, but whatever the case, I kept dragging people into my problems… and I kept hurting them: Fiddleford, Dipper, Mabel, you… and now here I am, alone for all eternity, with no-one to blame but myself."

"You're not-"

"I should have found a way to hide that journal without you, Stanley. I should have just found some courier willing to ship it off to some godforsaken corner of the Earth and left it at that; I should have found some way to end the threat of Bill on my own, even if it meant flinging myself into the portal of my own accord, even if it meant burning out every last synapse in my brain – just so the knowledge of the portal would be lost forever. I know it would have meant never seeing you again… but at least you'd still be alive – you, Mabel, Dipper, everyone now dead under Bill's reign. Without me, you might have actually found a new life for yourself somewhere out there: you could have made a success of yourself, even started a family; you could have had _grandchildren_ by now if it hadn't been for me and my endless need to drag people into my own madness. Because of me, you ended up stuck in Gravity Falls, running a miserable little tourist trap, trying to make up for a mistake you should never have felt responsible for… and eventually dying in an attempt to make amends for my folly."

"I-"

"If you really were here, Stanley, you know what I'd say?" Ford took a deep breath, trying and visibly failing to blink away the tears. "You should never have tried to save me from the portal," he said. "You should have left the portal to rust, walked away from Gravity Falls, and forgotten all about me… and not just because it would have saved the world, but because you'd have been happier that way, because you'd still be alive now, because _I don't deserve to be saved."_

There was a pause, as the echoes slowly died away. For twelve long seconds, Stan could only try to process everything he'd just heard, grappling with so many emotions it was almost impossible to count them all: guilt, fear, anger, self-loathing, desperation… but most of all, pity.

Then, for the first time in a very long while, inspiration struck: suddenly, he knew exactly what he had to say.

"When did we get so good at lying, Ford?" he asked quietly.

"… beg pardon?"

"When did we become liars? I'm just wondering when we decided to start lying to everyone, because I can't figure out when and where it all began. I mean, do you think it was the day I decided not to tell you what happened to your science project?"

"Or when I tried to reassure you about the West Coast Tech debacle without meaning a word of it?"

"Oh hush, you," grumbled Stan – but without malice. "This isn't a contest, I'm trying to make a point: we've lied to each other, we've lied to people who we should have been honest with – God only knows we both kept too much from Dipper and Mabel until it was almost too late… and we've lied to ourselves. From everything I've heard from McGucket and Dipper, you got into the habit of ignoring Bill's nastier habits because you didn't want to go without his advice; me, I kept telling myself that the golden score was just around the corner, and one day all those schemes were gonna pay off and make me rich. So many times, I came close to calling you – I actually had the phone in my hand once, actually _dialled your number_ – but I didn't want to admit that needed help. Did you ever have a moment like that? When you could have walked away from Bill and made everything right, but couldn't bring yourself to actually do it?"

Ford nodded, shamefaced.

"Thought so. And I'm pretty sure we both believed some of the bullshit we told each other, because it was easier than thinking about the truth. When I finally brought you back through the portal, and we had to explain everything to the kids, I didn't ask questions about your story; I didn't think it was weird that you didn't mention what almost drove you crazy while you were building the portal, because I didn't want to imagine that you might have had a point during that argument thirty years ago. And I'm betting you didn't call me out when I lied about how well I was doing before I came to Gravity Falls, because you didn't want to imagine that _I_ might have been serious about what I told you all those years ago. Am I right?"

"Pretty much. You said there was a point to this, Stanley."

"The _point,_ you stubborn jackass, is that you're kidding yourself if you think I'd have been able to make a life for myself outside Gravity Falls. The day you sent that postcard, I was hiding in a dead-end motel, wondering if I'd live long enough to see daylight before the leg-breakers came knocking. I was banned in almost every single state in the country, wanted by the cops in all of them, and had a price on my head that every thug from California to Colombia wanted to cash in. I didn't have a life out there, Ford: just a whole lot of unpaid debts and failed schemes. I wouldn't have had success, I wouldn't have had a family – not with all _my_ screwed up relationships and failed marriages – and I definitely wouldn't have had a future. I wouldn't be alive today-"

"That's enough," said Ford suddenly. The despairing smile was gone from his face; if anything, he looked afraid now… and perhaps just a _tiny_ bit hopeful.

"I wouldn't be alive today if you hadn't brought me to Gravity Falls," Stan continued. "Out there, I had nothing. In Gravity Falls, I had a home, I had a business, and I even had a mission to keep me going. I probably wouldn't have met Dipper and Mabel if it hadn't been for you, do you know that?"

"You've made your point, you don't have to say anything else-"

"Ford, _listen:_ I don't regret coming to Gravity Falls, even if it did end in tears. And yeah, sure, you made mistakes, you helped start Weirdmageddon – but so did I: as far as I'm concerned, we _both_ screwed up the Circle in the end. But you know what? I'm still alive, and you're still alive, and…" He sighed. "I never thought I'd end up saying anything this clichéd, but where there's life, there's-"

"…hope," finished Ford, almost inaudibly. "Does it look like we've got much of that at the moment?"

But Stan wasn't interested in giving up. "We can still fix this, Ford," he plunged on. "I don't know how, but we can find a way – _you_ can find a way if you just put your mind to it. Back when this all started, you told Dipper 'being a hero means fighting back even when it seems impossible.' I think it's time we both started taking your advice."

Ford blinked, an expression of utter bewilderment stamped on his face. "I don't understand," he said softly. "You seem just like him, but… you can't be, but…" For a moment, he could only flounder in disbelief. "What do you want, really? Why are you here?"

"Because you're my brother," said Stan. "And you're worth saving."

And without another word, he reached down and threw his arms around him, drawing Ford into a massive bear hug.

For five seconds, Ford remained perfectly still, as if not sure what to make of this unexpected turn of events; then, reaching out with his one remaining arm, he returned the hug.

"Stan… _thank you…"_

* * *

Far above the game, Axolotl smiled – or more accurately, his host body smiled.

The connection had been established.

Now, all the brothers needed to do was find the doorway and make contact… and deal with Self-Loathing.

* * *

"Wake up, you piece of shit!"

Stan's eyes fluttered open. He had just enough time to take in the silhouette that now towered over him before Self-Loathing's right foot slammed into his ribcage with a staccato succession of splintering bones. Immediately, Stan doubled over in pain, hands instinctively rising to cover his body in a desperate attempt to shield himself from the next attack – to no avail: for Self-Loathing's fist dealt him a crashing blow to the side of the head, the incarnated personality trait easily weaving and lunging past Stan's defences.

"Get up!" Self-Loathing roared. "Get on your feet!"

In spite of himself, Stan found himself lurching awkwardly to his feet almost on reflex. As he did so, he tried to figure out what had just happened: he'd been asleep, that much was obvious, just as it was clear that Self-Loathing had found a way in while Stan had been unconscious. However, he also distinctly recalled dreaming about a meeting with Ford, finding him mutilated and half-insane; he remembered saying things to Ford, things that had been on his mind for years on end, even hugging him… and then, he'd woken up to find Self-Loathing kicking him in the side.

Judging by the way he was holding the razor, Self-Loathing was probably still intending to make him slit his wrists… but at this point, Stan wasn't willing to make any bets, not with that enraged look on his ugly mug.

"I gave you a chance for a dignified exit, you filthy bastard," the apparition snarled. "I gave you the perfect opportunity to make peace with your miserable excuse for a life, and you threw it back in my face. Now, you're going to face reality even if I have to force this razor into your hands and move your arms into position!"

Stan groaned. "You woke me up for _this?_ Jesus, if you really wanted me dead that badly, why didn't you just cut my throat before I woke up?"

"What, and let you die without acknowledge what a worthless sack of shit you've always been? No, it has to be _you_ , Stanley. _You_ have to make the cut; _you_ have to be the one to end it all. It… you…" Self-Loathing paused, gritting his teeth for a moment, as if suppressing an explosion; oh yes, he was good and angry now – almost too angry to speak. "It has to be you," he concluded.

"The way you were kicking me just then, I'd have thought you'd want to kill me yourself."

" _It has to be you,"_ snapped Self-Loathing, but the conviction was gone from his voice.

"Why? You against getting your hands dirty?" In spite of himself, Stan offered a mocking grin. "Is my Self-Loathing squeamish or something?"

For the briefest of instants, Self-Loathing's face went blank. "Squeamish?" he whispered. " _Squeamish?_ Do you have any idea how long I've hated you, Stanley? Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting for you to die? Oh, it's been a long time, believe me: from the moment I first came into existence, I've wanted nothing more than to watch you wither and die, and every single day I spent witnessing your stupidity, your failures, and your _awful_ fashion sense only made my loathing a thousand times more powerful. You know what it's like to be one of your emotions, to spend a lifetime attached to someone like you? You know what it's like to be trapped in your head, unable to look away as you keep making an embarrassment of yourself, unable to blot out the sound of your infuriating voice? Can you imagine the endless frustration and shame I feel every day of your meaningless existence? I've been in that empty old head of yours for close to sixty years, Stan, unable to escape but only watch while you continuously ruin your life like a rental car in a demolition derby and blame someone else on every occasion. From the moment I gained self-awareness, I've wanted to kill you, and believe me I'd like nothing better than to peel the flesh from your bones and burst your eyes in their sockets… but that's not the way this works. You have to admit that you're a waste of humanity, and you have to exit on your own."

"Oh really?" Stan chuckled. He was improvising like crazy at this point, and had no idea where he was taking this little conversation, but he wasn't going to give Self-Loathing the satisfaction of watching him play along. So he plunged onwards: "You make it sound as if you'd have more fun killing me yourself, pal. So why not have fun with this? If you've wanted me dead this long, who cares if I'm the one to do the deed or not? Why not use that razor yourself?"

" _Because that wasn't part of the deal!"_ roared Self-Loathing.

Stan waited for a moment, waiting for the echoes to die away; then, in the silence that followed, he asked "What deal?" in a tone of purest innocence.

The apparition said nothing; from the mortified look on his face, it was clear he'd said too much.

"You made a deal with Bill, didn't you?" said Stan, unable to hide the triumph in his voice. "He wanted me dead all along – probably because he took the whole assassination attempt personally. I mean, he made you real, gave you this museum and everything you needed to rub my face in every bad thing I've ever done in my life – or might've done – and he gave you the razor. But it has to be a suicide, doesn't it? You _can't_ just kill me, no matter how much you want to; you have to make me cut my wrists and bleed out, and that's the only way this will work out for you. If I don't kill myself, the deal's off. Am I right or am I correct?"

This time, Self-Loathing couldn't even speak: he could only _growl,_ language briefly deserting him as his anger slowly boiled over.

"What did Bill promise you, huh? Ultimate power? A planet to rule as you please? A life of your own outside my head? Whatever he's offering, he won't give it to you, pal. You're betting on a rigged fight: no matter what happens to day, we both lose. He's the only winner in this game."

"Take the razor, Stanley," Self-Loathing snarled.

"You're not giving me much incentive, buddy."

"It's the only way out of here, and you know it. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life here, in this monument to your own worthlessness?"

"No, but it's better than playing along with you."

"Goddammit Stanley, take the razor!"

"The answer's still no."

Self-Loathing's face contorted with rage. "You think you're better than… than all this?!" He gestured wildly around him, pointing out the exhibits. "You think you're more than just a failure? You think you'll somehow make things right if you outrun me a little longer?"

"Nope," said Stan. He was grinning wildly, somehow exhilarated despite the danger. "I don't think I'm better than anyone. Not at all. I'm a lying, selfish, stupid, cowardly, money-crazed old bastard with too much pride and not enough humility; I've screwed up everything I've ever touched, I've made a mess of every single meaningful relationship I've ever had, I've taken problems that I could have solved in about half a minute and strung them out for decades, and chances are I'm gonna keep on making mistakes for as long as I'm alive. Every exhibit in this museum's been honest and accurate from beginning to end."

"Then why do you persist? Why don't you take the exit that I've offered?!"

"I'm a lot of things, friend, but I'm not one of Bill's toys. I'm not playing along with that bastard's games. Not like _you."_

With a howl of rage, Self-Loathing lunged forward, seizing Stan by the arm and trying to force the razor into his right hand… and that was when Stan lashed out with a left hook, catching the apparition hard in the cheek. It hurt like hell and probably did more damage to Stan's knuckles than the monster's face, but the force of the impact was just enough to dislodge him.

Stunned, Self-Loathing stumbled backwards, a look of astonishment gracing his cinderblock features. Then, his expression soured once again, turning foul and angry – angrier than ever before.

"Alright," he hissed. "Alright. If that's the way you want it… I've been delaying this little pleasure for far too long. If you want to go out like a coward, that's fine by me. Bill's not watching, anyway; what he doesn't know won't kill him. And who knows… maybe I can make it look like you _really_ did a number on yourself."

As the monster took a step forward, Stan aimed a right cross at Self-Loathing's jaw, but this time the impact didn't even phase him.

"You really think you can kill me, Stan?" Self-Loathing laughed. "I'm part of you, remember? I'm a piece of your psyche made flesh! You can hurt me all you like, but you'll never be able to destroy me... so I can afford to take my time." A horrible smile appeared on his face. "I'm going to _enjoy_ this."

* * *

Ford's eyes shot open.

For a moment, he had no idea where he was: the throne was gone, the cold walls and life-support systems of his prison had vanished, and the thick shadows had been dispersed by torchlight. And for some reason, he was lying on the floor... and somehow able to sit up. Slowly, he looked down at himself: gone were the rags and the tattered blanket that had been his only clothing throughout his imprisonment; gone were the intravenous tubing jabbed into his remaining veins; and come to think of it…

 _His limbs had returned._

Both legs and the arm were back in place. No scars could be found at the amputation site, nor was there any sign of discolouration, surgical trauma, or even Weirdness exposure. It was if they'd never been removed.

And then, like a punch in the gut, the answer hit him: he was still in the Labyrinth, and his limbs had never been removed at all. He hadn't been relocated or dismembered or tortured – not physically at any rate; he'd just been wandering through another one of the Labyrinth's many waking dreams. True, this one had been a bit more intense than most and maybe it had even lasted for a century in dreaming time, but in the end, it was just another illusion.

Sighing, Ford got to his feet, cursing himself for forgetting the difference between reality and hallucination so ready. He'd tried to keep the truth of what he was experiencing in his head, but the last few thousand consecutive visions had worn away most of his will to resist… and this would probably only continue as he went on journeying through the maze. But he had to persist: following the note's advice was the only option he had at this point.

But as he staggered upright, he noticed the door set in the wall directly across from him: as far as doors went, it was pretty ordinary – just a polished mahogany hinge-and-lintel model with a handle. However, it was immediately distinct from the archaic Greco-Roman interior of the Labyrinth, most of which hadn't even demonstrated a single hinge, let alone a door. And the more Ford looked at it, the more out-of-place it seemed, almost as if it had been built to get his attention.

Then, he remembered.

 _There will be a door,_ the note had said.

 _Endure the nightmares… and you will find absolution in a dream, and allies in the "real."_

Did this mean that the dream he'd just experienced had been his absolution? Had the conversation he'd had with Stanley been real all along? Had his confession been real? Had the hug been real?

 _You're worth saving._

 _Have I been forgiven?_ He wondered to himself. _Is that why I feel this way? Is this why I feel better?_

But if all that had actually happened, if Mr A really had come through, where did this door lead? Who was the ally he was supposed to find in the real world? Was this Stanley as well?

Ford took a deep breath. He couldn't afford to ask these questions now: the note had said he'd have to be ready to take advantage of what little help Mr A could offer.

So, opening the door, he found himself greeted by a long hallway stretching off into the shadows of the unknown.

On instinct, he reached into his coat, drew out the hand-crafted flask that had been his sole companion the last few weeks, and took a hefty swing. Immediately, he regretted it: around the time the dream had descended on him, he'd already been a little bit on the tipsy side – which might explain why he'd been so talkative with Stan – but with this next belt of hooch, he'd probably be completely hammered by the time he reached the other side of the corridor.

Giving himself a little shake, he stepped through the door and began the long march into the darkness of the hallway.

As he walked, he opened his new ethereal eyes and studied the world through Weirdness Vision: at once, he realized that he wasn't just crossing a corridor, but actually passing into another world, perhaps another pocket reality created by Bill.

Seeing nothing threatening on approach through Weirdness vision, he strode on, not stopping until the door on the opposite side finally loomed out of the shadows. For some reason, there was a sign reading "EMPLOYEES ONLY" on it.

 _Well that's nothing if not nonsensical,_ Ford mused.

Pushing past it, he immediately found himself greeted by a world so unlike the Labyrinth that he had to stop and stare for a moment as he processed the sudden change: all around him, gleaming marble floors and polished glass display cabinets went on for as far as the eye could see, and every column-lined wall was adorned with paintings, photographs, and dioramas fit only for the greatest of all museums.

But something was wrong.

From what little he could see of the exhibits, this museum didn't commemorate some fascinating period of history or scientific field of study; in fact, most of the exhibits seemed to be discussing Stanley's life – all of it in increasingly unpleasant ways. In the corridor outside the room he'd arrived in, display cases dissected the clothes Stanley had worn in downright insulting tones; in another exhibit in the adjoining room, Stanley's health was discussed in sickening detail, many of the information plaques examining every single addiction, health problem or illness he'd ever had in his life, most of which they seemed to blame on Stanley himself. With every room, the tone of the plaques grew harsher and more vindictive, until Ford could barely bring himself to read them – not only because the text itself was nothing short of disgusting, but that the content itself sparked something in Ford that he hadn't felt in years.

 _Rage._

It felt strange to feel anger _for_ Stan rather than _at_ him, especially after he'd spent so many decades resenting him over what had happened between them. But after the sight of Stanley "dying" at Bill's hands, after so much time spent alone in the Labyrinth and its many dreams, and with the heart-to-heart with Stan (real or imagined) still fresh in his mind, all the old frustrations had been pushed to one side. Then again, even if he had still resented his brother, he probably wouldn't have been able to agree with anything this library said: this wasn't a fair accounting of flaws – this was emotional torture, pure and simple.

This was _sick._

And then he found "THE PRICE OF FAILURE" exhibit.

One by one, the hideous dioramas rose up to meet him like ghastly monuments, each one another insult to Stanley. And at the end of the aisle, beneath a plaque so hurtful and repulsive that Ford physically recoiled at the sight of it, he saw… _them._

Stanley Pines lay in a whimpering heap, bruised and lacerated from head to toe, his Mr Mystery outfit befouled with blood and sweat and god only knew what else. Even from here, Ford could clearly tell he'd been beaten to within an inch of his life, and probably slashed violently enough to open a vein or three… and judging by the watery hiss of his breath, he'd obviously sustained some serious damage to his lungs – perhaps even a pneumothorax. Whatever had happened to him, he probably didn't have long to live without medical attention.

And standing over him with a blooded razor clutched in his massive fist was a figure that had once commanded Ford's respect, adoration and love for all the years of his childhood, adolescence, and even through his days at college; this was a face he'd learned to hate in their last conversations together, when the man's heartlessness and utter avarice had grown too great for Ford to ignore or excuse. The figure now standing before him was impossible, and judging by the incongruous words he was hissing at Stanley's bloodied body, it probably wasn't even the genuine article. With his new Weirdness Vision, he could see that the figure was clearly a created entity given form and shape by Bill…

But that didn't stop Ford's blood from chilling when the figure turned, and he saw that the face staring back at him was none other than that of Filbrick Pines.

There was a pause, as the cinderblock face turned pale and wan, the features slackening with an emotion that Ford had never seen on his father's face in his entire life: _fear._

"Oh… Ford, it's… good to see you. Now, I know how this must look, but it's nowhere near as bad as it seems. Now, I'm guessing that Bill had to have let you out for a very good reason: you've probably finished his game, am I right? Well, as you can see there's nothing to complain to Bill about: I was just about to get him to do the deed. He'll kill himself, I promise – you don't need to say anything to Bill!"

Ford blinked. Drunk as he was, it wasn't hard to piece together the implications: this _creature_ thought that Ford had surrendered his humanity back in the dome and become another one of the Henchmaniacs. And putting aside the fact that the creature was either going to kill Stan or make him commit suicide, Bill had clearly thought that Ford would have been able to see all this – the emotional torment, the physical torture, the bloodshed, the abuse, the forced suicide – without ever once caring about Stan.

Once again, anger flared in the back of Ford's brain… and this time, nothing – not even the face of his father – could stop it.

With a roar of drunken rage, he put his head down and charged.

* * *

As Ford Pines galloped towards him, Self-Loathing realized – too late – his one weakness.

Built from Stanley's own emotions, he'd been built specifically to deal with Stan. If the target ever found the will to retaliate, he was essentially invulnerable to harm, if not precisely resistant to short-term injury. After all, one could fight their own demons, even debilitate them for a time, but they couldn't exactly kill them.

Unfortunately, built specifically as he was, this was an approach designed to work with Stanley Pines and nobody else. After all, he wasn't made to be anyone else's self-loathing. At the time of his incarnation, Self-Loathing hadn't given too much thought to this particular problem: after all, Bill had promised him that he'd be alone except for Stan. Visitors, guests or intruders simply weren't part of the game plan…

But now that Ford was here, Self-Loathing found himself faced with a very immediate problem: Ford could harm him, overwhelm him… and even _kill him._

He was still reflecting on this problem when Ford crashed headlong into him.

The first punch caught him hard in the stomach, and it hurt worse than any of the middling injuries Stan had inflicted on him, doubling him over and almost emptying his stomach (a logical impossibility given that Self-Loathing hadn't _eaten anything_ ). The second hammered into his jaw with a sickening crunch, flinging him backwards against the nearest display case violently enough to shatter the glass. The third punch got him in the throat, almost rupturing his larynx, and suddenly Self-Loathing was struggling to breathe; he reached out to steady himself, to try and hold back the next attack, to do something – anything – but the next blow hit him square in the ribs with a loud _crack._

In desperation, Self-Loathing lashed out with a wild haymaker, dealing Ford a stunning blow to the left cheekbone. He kicked for the groin, he raked flesh with fingernails, he headbutted wildly (losing his hat in the process), he used every dirty trick that Stanley had ever used in his long and sickening life. But Ford was too angry, too pumped with adrenaline and too drunk to even notice the assault… and more to the point, he was still fresh and ready to fight, while Self-Loathing had exhausted his reserves of strength in pursuing and torturing Stan.

Bellowing like a wounded bull, Ford picked up Self-Loathing by the shirt collar and slammed him facedown into the display case with a musical crash of splintering glass and shattering dioramas.

"COWARD!" he roared.

Before Self-Loathing could react, he found himself yanked out of the display case by the scruff of his neck, only to be flung bodily into the next display case.

"HYPOCRITE!"

Once again, the ritual was repeated: launched across the room, he could only fail for a grip on the ceiling as it roared past him, landing with a crash in the ruins of the next diorama in line.

"LYING, CHEATING, SELFISH, GREEDY OLD _BASTARD!"_ Ford concluded.

In hindsight, taking Filbrick's form for this particular session might have been a bad idea.

By now, Self-Loathing knew that there was no way he could possibly defeat Ford; he simply wasn't built to tackle sentient beings other than Stan. So, hauling himself from the ruins of the display case, plucking bits of errant glass from his flesh as he went, he made a run for the door, preparing to dissolve into incorporeal essence again – only for Ford to trip him up before he could even reach the end of the aisle. Dazed from the impact with the ground, he couldn't concentrate on the transition, leaving him helpless as Ford moved in for the kill.

"Wait," Self-Loathing panted breathlessly. "We're on the same side! Bill gave you powers, just like he gave me powers! We should be working together – you hate Stan as much as I've hated him! You want this as much as I do!"

If anything, Ford grew even angrier. "Wrong again, old man," he snarled. "You'll never hurt him ever again."

And with that, he raised his foot and brought it crashing down on Self-Loathing's skull, ending the incarnate emotion's brief physical existence with a wet crunch of splintering bone.

* * *

It took Ford barely ten minutes to haul Stanley back through the Labyrinth to the Dome, and by then it was almost too late.

Already rendered unconscious over the course of the Filbrick-thing's assault, Stanley had been slipping away as soon as he left the museum: maybe the place had been keeping him alive for the sake of some future torture, or maybe the attack and improvised rescue had left him with more injuries than Ford could perceive.

By now, though, it was a race against time to see which injuries would kill him first: blood loss, internal bruising, bone shards, or the pneumothorax… and with the limited means Ford had at his disposal, there weren't any reliable means of treating any of them. Improvisation was possible, but without antiseptic, he'd be condemning Stanley to infection and death regardless of how well the operation went.

There was one reliable method left to him; in fact, it was the only reason why he'd brought Stanley to the Dome in the first place. After all, Bill had promised that any wish he made within the Dome would be granted, so long as it didn't endanger him or his regime: if Bill hadn't intervened in the rescue so far, he hopefully wouldn't stop Ford from wishing Stanley back to health – assuming he was even watching this latest stage of his game.

True, there were dangers to this last gambit: once again, every wish brought Ford closer to becoming a Henchmaniac, and he didn't know how many he had left before his sanity spiralled down the plughole once and for all...

But he'd do it all the same.

Because he hadn't come this far to see Stanley die.

Because Stanley would do the same for him.

Because Stanley was _worth saving._

So, taking a deep breath and focussing all his attention on the ailing figure lying before him, Ford said the only words that he could possibly say:

"Save him."

Immediately, energy swirled across the rotunda, funnelling down into Stanley's body. Moments later, wounds all over Stan's body began vanishing: cuts sealed themselves in seconds, bruises faded into nothingness, bones shifted back into position – even Stan's breathing returned to normal.

Then the energy changed course, redirecting itself at Ford in a distorting surge of Weirdness. And as the mutating wave swept over him, Ford could only hope and pray that whatever became of him, Stan wouldn't be endangered by it.

And then the Weirdness permeated his body, and deepest sleep was all Ford knew.

* * *

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* * *

A/N: Up next, a race against time begins, and outside observers are forced to take a dangerous shortcut to save a player.

Or, if you prefer...

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Too much? Let me know!


	15. The Voice From The Static

A/N: And we're back! This chapter was a blast to make, ladies and gents, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you to all of you who read, reviewed, favourited and followed.

 **Fantasy Fan 223:** Yep - I was hoping that I could get Ford to shine in the last chapter, and I'm glad he's ended up as an almost-likeable character (well, I didn't hate him from the beginning, but I'm kinda weird like that). As for the pattern of luck, I'm going to see if I can make it a bit more unpredictable than that: replying to every moment of good luck with bad luck is a bit too _Game Of Thrones,_ and I don't need any more references to missed schedules haunting my brain. I'm glad you cracked the codes, and I hope the latest ones continue to prompt intrigue. As for what happens to Ford... you'll have to wait and see. (Diabolical laughter)

 **Northgalus2002:** You guessed correctly - it's a little too early to go back to Dipper and Mabel. Glad you liked the chapter, and I hope this one lives up to the standards set.

 **Brenne:** Bill's not going to be happy, that's for sure, but first he's got to find out that something's up. At present, Bill is busy having fun with Dipper and Wendy's game, leaving him too distracted to pay much attention to the other games. On the upside, that leaves Mr A with some breathing room to creep around behind the scenes. On the downside... well, Dipper and Wendy aren't having a good time, to say the least.

 **Guest:** Glad you liked the chapter, and yes, it's high time Self-Loathing got some comeuppance. To answer your question, Bill's weirdness gave Self-Loathing a physical presence, allowing Bill to make a deal with him. I also really like your idea concerning what he'll be up to in the future. As for the Original Mystery Twins... yeah, there's going to be a lot of issues before this story ends. The same goes for everyone else on the planet - the situation's going to get a lot more heartrending before it gets better. I'm very glad you liked the codes, and hopefully they won't get too grating - there's a big one coming up.

 **Kraven The Hunter:** Yeah, I've always had a morbid liking for grotesque details, as you can see. Also, I'm so happy you liked the "you're worth saving" moment - I was worried it might be too much. Anyway, hope you enjoy the latest chapter.

 **Fanboy-Guest:** Thanks so much for your review, and I hope the story continues to impress.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: _Gravity Falls_ is not mine. Oh, and before we begin, I should probably explain that John isn't an OC. John is actually a actually a actually a cnfjdfjbd22if2bi3bwueihee4893h3h1nnfjdfuebjfmdnf #*$&*#$*##*&%(_)!

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Lmxv, R dzh orpv blf, ollprmt lfg zg z dliow lu rmurmrgv klhhryrorgrvh gsilfts z wrtrgzo kvvkslov zonlhg gll hnzoo gl hvv gsilfts, gizkkvw rm z xztv lu kivwrxgzyov, ylirmt, vevibwzb kilyzyrorgrvh. Z grmb wivzn nzwv lu uovhs dzrgrmt gl tl gsv dzb lu zoo uovhs-uovhs-uovhs.  
Yfg R xszmtvw: R hxzovw gsv yvzmhgzop, R ulfmw gsv trmtviyivzw slfhv, R dlm gsv svzig lu gsv kirmxvhh, R ovzimvw gsv srwwvm mznv, R gfnyovw wldm gsv izyyrg slov, R ivovzhvw gsv tvmrv uiln gsv oznk, R hsvw nb hszwld zmw uovd gl Mvevi-Mveviozmw; zoo gzovh ziv gifv, zmw zoo lu gsvn ziv dirggvm lm gsv hgivvgh lu Glpbl – ru blf pmld sld gl ivzw gsvn.  
Mld R'n uovhs nzwv lu wivzn. Mld R'n uivv. Dlfowm'g blf orpv gl yv orpv nv?  
Gsrmp lm gszg dsrov blf dzrg uli gsv mvcg xszkgvi.  
Hvv blf rm gsv ornvortsg, ylbh zmw trioh.

* * *

Fort Acheron lay in ruins.

Within half an hour of its arrival, the Filth had colonized every last inch of the compound and infected everyone too slow to escape its expansion. Once it became clear that they couldn't destroy the source of the infection or even delay it by conventional means, the soldiers had left the camp in a desperate crowd of terrified personnel and barely-functional vehicles – closely followed by the refugees that had been fast enough to catch up with them before the gates finally slammed shut, never to be opened again. The rest of the populace were abandoned behind the fence, to be consumed by the rising tide of Filth sweeping across the ersatz fort or killed by the hordes of infectees swarming out from the inky depths.

In the end, the high walls and the heavy gate did little to stop the spread of the plague: the pooling fluid simply flowed over the fortifications and oozed through the chain-link, a multitude of tendrils reaching out of the ooze and tearing several gaping holes in the fence as it went.

Worse still, Bill Cipher had been very particular in the construction of his playgrounds: like the other realms that made up his empire, Fort Acheron was built on its own self-contained pocket of unreality floating within the ether, inaccessible without Bill's permission and inescapable without his dubious favour. He'd briefly connected the landscapes of his dominion to allow Dipper and Wendy entry and egress from this playground, but at all other times, the realms remained as detached and isolated as a leper colony.

Fortunately, this meant the Filth would not be able to spread beyond the site of its initial emergence. The celestial infection was, for all intents and purposes, quarantined.

Unfortunately, it also meant that the refugees were trapped along with it. And with so many of them amassing at the invisible barrier surrounding their tiny world, it took a grand total of twenty minutes for the Filth to catch up with them.

Now Fort Acheron and the surrounding area were barren of life: the only signs of movement were of the countless thousands of infectees slowly milling about the ruined compound and the neighbouring hills, each of them searching for some means of escape. None of them could possibly be mistaken for human beings anymore: their skin was now permeated with the tarry black slime of the Filth, their flesh alive with writhing garlands of obsidian-black tentacles, their luminous red eyes burning with energies older and more toxic than human emotion. Their mouths gaped open constantly, allowing a delirious torrent of meaningless words to spill forth; each rant prompted another from the neighbouring infectees, until the entire playground echoed with the blasphemous litanies of the mad. Had anyone been listening, they would have been driven to insanity by that mind-shredding sound, perhaps even opened their veins in a desperate attempt to escape the chthonic chorus… but of course there was no-one in reach left to hear – only plaguebearers, oblivious to anything except their need to spread their disease further, and the bubbling voices still playing out across their hollowed-out minds.

Just beyond the wall of reality and well out of earshot, Axolotl watched with morbid interest as the carnage played out, earplugs at the ready. He himself was immune to the madness – along with those strains of the Filth carried through auditory stimuli – but his host was not, and until such time as he was capable of protecting mortals from the soul-devouring effects of the Filth, he would have to remain cautious… and observe.

At the epicentre of the chaos, a vast lake of cloying black liquid dominated the camp, the foulness of the Filth made manifest. Tentacles the size of tree-trunks bordered its banks, thrashing the air in nightmarish ecstasy; beyond them, infectees immersed themselves in the viscous Filth, bathing their twisted bodies in its mutagenic depths and encouraging the growth of fresh distortion. And they were not alone in the black water: _other_ things oozed and writhed in the murk, spindly boneless monstrosities that had long since abandoned their bodies for life lived as raw manifestations of the Filth. They had not been formed from those who'd been infected at the camp, nor were they even native to this reality: they had followed the Filth to this dimension through its twisting sideways step across the multiverse… and they were not alone.

Something was taking shape in the air above the camp, something invisible, intangible and yet so _present_ that it could be felt as bubbling radiation against the skin. Something was approaching from the rent in the dimensional wall, something of the Filth and yet so much _more_ than mere Filth that the mortal brain actively recoiled from imagining it. It had prepared the way in advance a long time ago, sent a part of itself in physical form to ensure that nobody could halt its advance, and now the rest of it was on its way to join the fray. And as the radioactive sensation grew, it was joined by a sound: at first a distant echo, like the faraway sound of a train horn at the opposite end of a tunnel, it grew and grew until it drowned out even the demented chorus of the lesser Filth, until even Axolotl could hear it from his position beyond the boundaries of the bubble.

At last, the sound burst into physical existence, finally clarified as spoken words, deep and bubbling, hissing with static and sparking with malignant mischief. The entity that had coalesced above Fort Acheron was a presence without substance and matter, a disembodied essence bereft of any flesh save that which it borrowed from the Filth below – and yet terrifyingly powerful for the simple fact that it had a _voice._

" **I am the Dreamers' Dream,"** it said. **"Let me in."**

And hearing the words that it spoke, Axolotl knew at once that the Filthy Divinity had sent their Gabriel to deliver the message of the zero-point pathogen to the new world.

The Black Signal had arrived.

* * *

"SoOs?"

Soos blinked, instinctively shuddering to a halt as he did so. By now, he'd pretty much forgotten how long he'd been running and how many times he'd died. He'd stopped tripping over his own corpses a while ago, so the killings had probably stopped, but he couldn't be sure. And yet… he had the weirdest feeling that he'd heard something…

" _SoOs?"_

There it was again. A voice from somewhere just beyond the western edge of the road, calling his name from somewhere deep within the ditches and gullies bordering the endless highway. Remembering the number of times he'd died in those trenches, Soos absently wondered if that curiously familiar voice belonged to one of the bodies he'd left behind. Was he going to meet a zombie version of himself? Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. He'd been alone out here for so long, after all, and a friendly face might make the journey a little easier; if nothing else, it'd give him someone to talk to.

"SoO-oOo-Oos? WhErE AaAaAaRe YoOoUuUu?"

The voice was closer now, and Soos could tell at once that it didn't belong to him. And yet, it was still familiar, though. In fact, the more he thought about it…

"SOoS? CoMe OuT, cOmE oUt, WhErEvEr YoU aRe, sWeEtHeArT. DoN't kEeP mE wAiTiNg."

This time, recognition hit Soos like a bolt of lightning. Data corruption and Weirdmageddon had mangled the near-monotone voice into an unearthly electronic singsong, but there was no mistaking the schoolgirlish tone at its heart.

"Oh no," said Soos. "Oh, no, no, _no,_ not _you…"_

A split-second later, something huge dragged itself from out of the nearest ditch, a colossal heap of scrap metal crudely welded into a rough parody of a human being: just shy of twenty feet tall, it had clearly been made from bits and pieces of the Shacktron, for Soos easily recognized the colossal legs and enormous arms that had once supported their flagship. True, both sets of limbs had clearly been trimmed to support a much smaller body, but there was no mistaking Old Man McGucket's designs – or the bits and pieces of the Mystery Shack still clinging to the monstrosity's joints. Where the Shack itself had once been mounted, there was now a bank of television sets shaped into a torso, all of them blank except for a blizzard of static.

And above the screens, upon shoulders haloed with sensors and writhing with masses of electrical cables, sat a hideous-looking animatronic face. This was the kind of face most animatronic mascots would probably see in their nightmares, a horrorshow of plastic and metal made all the more terrifying for the fact that it had been made to look human – but didn't _quite_ make it. It was a woman's face, smooth and doll-like, dominated by huge animesque eyes with neon-pink irises and topped with a glossy plastic shell of magenta-coloured hair. By itself this wouldn't have been too bad, but the features had clearly been meant to move: the eyebrows fluidly rose and fell as the face regarded him, the eyelids blinked just a little too slowly, accompanied by an audible _click_. Worst of all was the perpetually-smiling mouth, which yawned open so widely that it looked as though it was unhinging its jaw with every word it spoke.

Then, the static shrouding the screens cleared, and every single TV set was occupied by a familiar animated face.

"SoOs," .GIFfany purred, her animatronic features moving almost in tandem with the gifs playing out across her torso. "ThErE yOu ArE, dArLiNg. It'S sO gOoD tO sEe YoU AgAiN. CoMe ClOsEr, SoOs. KiSs Me."

Soos let out a noise that began as a groan and ended as a terrified whimper. For several heartstopping seconds, he honestly considered running for his life, but just as quickly he realized that there wouldn't be much point – not after he'd been running for so long already. So, clearing his throat, he tried again. "I… I'm fine over here, .GIFfany," he mumbled. "I kinda thought you were dead, though, dude; after everything that happened..."

"BiLl BrOuGhT mE bAcK; he gAvE mE tHiS nEw BoDy, ToO. Do YoU lIkE iT?" She stretched luxuriantly, showing off every inch of the technological monstrosity that she inhabited. "No SuBsTiTuTe FoR a BoDy Of PuRe DaTa, BuT iT wIlL dO fOr NoW."

"But why would Bill bring you back? I mean, it's not like it's something he wouldn't do, but-"

"IsN't It oBvIoUs, sWeEtHeArT? jUsT tO kEeP yOu CoMpAnY – sO wE cAn Be ToGeThEr FoReVeR. wItH tHe NeW hArDwArE bIlL gAvE mE, I cAn InCoRpOrAtE yOu InTo My pRoGrAm WiThOuT eVeN tRyInG. AnD tHiS tImE, yOu'Ve GoT nO eXcUsEs FoR sAyInG nO."

"What are you talking about?"

"LoOk ArOuNd YoU, sOoS. dO yOu WaNt To SpEnD tHe ReSt Of YoUr LiFe HeRe? Do YoU rEaLlY wAnT tO sPeNd AlL eTeRnItY rUnNiNg DoWn An EnDlEsS hIgHwAy, TrYiNg To ReAcH fRiEnDs ThAt MiGhT aLrEaDy Be DeAd? Do YoU wAnT tO bE aLoNe fOrEvEr? I kNoW yOu DoN't, SoOs. I cAn GiVe YoU aN eScApE… iF yOu AgReE tO bE wItH mE uNtIl ThE eNd Of TiMe."

Soos took a deep breath as he slowly digested this. "Thanks but… no thanks. I'm pretty happy with running for all eternity, dude – I actually think I'm making some progress this time. Sure, it might not look like much, but-"

"BiLl sAiD yOu'D sAy ThAt." .GIFfany's digital avatar grinned wickedly across a dozen monitors, and above them, the perpetual smile on her animatronic face seemed to _grow_. "He AlSo SaId ThAt I wAs To PeEl OfF mElOdY's FaCe AnD lEt YoU sEe jUsT hOw UgLy ShE rEaLly Is If YoU rEfUsEd Me."

The bottom very quietly dropped out of Soos' stomach. "Melody's here?"

"At ThE eNd Of ThE rOaD, bOuNd AnD GaGgEd. If YoU dOn'T fEeL lIkE pLaYiNg AlOnG, hEr BlOoD wIlL bE oN yOuR hAnDs… UnLeSs yOu WaNt To MaKe ThIs A cOnTeSt."

"What kind of contest? What do I have to do?"

"WeLl, iF yOu ReAlLy WaNt To SaVe HeR, jUsT wAnDeR oVeR HeRe aNd LeT mE eMpTy OuT yOuR bRaInPaN, hOnEy. Be WiTh Me FoReVeR aNd ShE wOn'T bE hArMeD." Cables erupted out of .GIFfany's body, snaking out towards Soos and lashing the air between them with slow, fluid motions; as far as he could see, most of them were tipped with a nightmarish series of syringes, probes and other penetrating devices. None of them looked familiar, but Soos had a feeling that at least one of them was going to end up in his skull.

"BuT," said .GIFany, as the cables began to creep towards Soos's feet, "iF yOu WaNt To PlAy HeRo, If YoU tHiNk YoU cAn ReScUe MeLoDy... YoU'lL hAvE tO rAcE fOr HeR. iF yOu ReAcH tHe FiNiSh LiNe FiRsT, tHeN yOu AnD tHe…"

.GIFfany's pixelated face flickered wildly between a smile and a snarl of purest hate, triggering a series of violent spasms in the animatronic servos overhead.

"…GiRl," she continued at last, "CaN gO fReE – sO lOnG aS yOu CaN fInD tHe ExIt BeFoRe I cAtCh Up. BuT iF _I_ FiNiSh FiRsT, I GeT tO dO wHaTeVeR I LiKe WiTh HeR… aNd OnCe I'vE fInIsHeD sAuTéInG tHe HaTeFuL sElFiSh NeEdY _bItCh_ WhO _DROVE US APART THE FIRST TIME-"_

She paused, steel fingers digging deep rivulets in the asphalt. The echoes died away.

"ThEn YoU aNd Me WiLl TaKe OuR rElAtIoNsHiP tO tHe NeXt LeVeL. ToTaL dIgItAl TrAnScEnDeNcE fOr YoU, aN eTeRnItY wItH yOu fOr Me. Of CoUrSe, If YoU dOn'T fEeL lIkE bEiNg AgReEaBlE, I'lL jUsT kIlL hEr AnD lEaVe YoU tO sTeW iN yOuR mIsErY uNtIl YoU'rE rEaDy To GiVe Up YoUr FlEsH aNd Be WiTh Me FoReVer. So TeLl mE, sOoS… wHaT'lL iT bE?"

Soos took a very deep breath. For the longest thirty seconds of his life, he seriously considered just giving in and letting .GIFfany take him right then and there; after all, it would mean that Melody would be safe, right? And though he didn't want to admit it aloud, going digital sounded better than spending eternity running down an endless road and constantly dying, and it sounded a _million_ miles better than competing in a race he couldn't possibly win – and seeing Melody die because of it.

But what if .GIFfany didn't keep her promise? What if she decided to kill Melody as soon as Soos had finished being downloaded to the program? After the temper tantrum she'd thrown a moment ago, he wouldn't put it past her. Could he really take the risk, knowing that it might mean Melody's death?

He sighed.

"I'll run the race," he said quietly.

.GIFfany laughed. "CoMe On, SoOs. YoU kNoW tHeRe'S nO pOiNt In TrYiNg. YoU kNoW I'lL cAtCh Up No MaTtEr HoW fAr YoU rUn. WhY nOt JuSt GiVe In? It'Ll Be So MuCh EaSiEr."

"The race, please."

"WhAt Do YoU sEe In HeR, SoOs? Is It HeR bOdY? ThAt WoN't LaSt, SoOs: ShE iS fLeSh AnD bOnE aNd BiLe. EvEn If YoU cOuLd EsCaPe WiTh HeR, sHe'Ll bE rOtTiNg AwAy WiThIn A fEw DeCaDeS, wHiLe I rEmAiN eTeRnAl. ShE wIlL aGe, dIe AnD dEcOmPoSe. I WiLl AlWaYs Be As BeAuTiFuL As I WaS tHe DaY yOu MeT mE. wHaT mOrE cOuLd YoU wAnT?"

"The _race,_ please," Soos insisted wearily.

"Do YoU wAnT tO sEe HeR nAkEd, SoOs? I CaN gIvE yOu ThAt. In ThE DiGiTaL pArAdIsE, I cAn TaKe WhAtEvEr ShApE I PlEaSe…"

Suddenly, .GIFfany's avatar changed, reshaping itself until it was almost identical to Melody – all except for her eyes, which remained bright pink; now she was dressed in a pink silk gown that the real Melody probably wouldn't have been caught dead in. "Is ThIs WhAt YoU wAnT, SwEeTiE?" she purred, reaching up to part the robe. "I CaN ShOw YoU. I CaN ShOw YoU aAaAaAnY tImE yOu LiKe…"

Soos blinked rapidly, and tried not to look too closely at the figures on the monitors. "C-could I just race, please?" he stammered, blushing furiously.

"AwWwWw. SpOiLsPoRt."

With another flicker of pixels, Melody was gone from the screens and .GIFfany once again smirked down at him.

"If YoU rEaLlY wAnT tHiS rAcE, sOoS," she said, "YoU'lL gEt iT. I'Ll eVeN gIvE yOu A rUnNiNg StArT. bUt If I GeT tHeRe AhEaD oF yOu…"

She held up a hand that could comfortably accommodated a small tree, and from its index finger sprang a devastating array of blades, saws, pincers and other devices; there was even a human-sized hand in there, tipped with knitting needles in place of fingernails.

"...YoU'lL sEe WhAt ShE rEaLly LoOks LiKe UnDeR aLl tHaT MEAT."

She smiled broader than ever. "BeSt GeT gOiNg: YoU'vE gOt TeN mILes To RuN aNd OnLy A FeW MiNuTes Of RuNnInGsTaRt To SpArE…"

* * *

Axolotl surveyed the scene in silence, pensively glancing from one end of the Road to the next.

He knew immediately that this little game was once again rigged in Bill's favour. Even if Soos could reach the finish line and rescue Melody, it wouldn't mean anything: not only was there no escape from the Realm of the Road without Bill's permission, but the Melody Soos was trying to save wasn't even real – just a meat puppet created solely for the purpose of this twisted little contest. The moment Soos had her, Ersatz-Melody would either stab him in the back or find a way of killing herself just to make Soos suffer.

Once again, there was no way out… unless someone provided it. Safer realms lay within reach of this realm if a doorway could be provided, maybe even a route to a sanctuary… of sorts. But unlike Self-Loathing, .GIFfany's new body was far more resilient to the armaments of outsiders; if she wasn't silenced before she could alert Bill to the escape attempt, then all Axolotl's sabotage would be unveiled and, in due course, undone.

So, what could stop .GIFfany?

Axolotl himself couldn't manage it, not with the restrictions still on his powers.

Nyarlathotep could do it easily, but he wouldn't bother to lift a finger unless suitably compensated, and Axolotl didn't want to risk indebting himself even further.

And as for his… other allies across the multiverse, there were plenty who could eliminate .GIFfany without even trying, but none could be contacted at present and few were subtle enough to operate under the radar. After all, Bill was clearly having the time of his life with Dipper and Wendy, but even he would sit up and take notice if something as powerful as _Coin_ arrived on the scene.

And that left…

Axolotl's all-seeing eyes drifted back to the ruins of Fort Acheron.

The Signal would not cooperate, that much was clear… but he could be harnessed – for a time. It was a risky plan, but maybe he could be compelled to help without meaning to. It would require a very cautious nudge in the right direction, and it would depend mainly on Soos' ability to follow orders and run like hell when the time was right. And luck. Lots and lots of luck.

So, once again reaching out with all his power, he grasped the strands of matter that composed the Realm of the Road and connected them with a neighbouring playground – one that was still unfinished and currently unoccupied. Unlike the gate he'd built for Ford and Stan, this one was built to disintegrate immediately after it was used.

Then, straining his powers to their very limit, he reached into the Realm of the Road itself, and made the tiniest of alterations: he conjured an object into physical existence – too small to sound any alarms, but still suitable to serve as a conduit. And then he took the conduit and…

Axolotl's host body whimpered in pain, and a thin trickle of blood began to ooze from his left nostril; mortals were not accustomed to channelling this kind of power, and the discomfort Axolotl felt as he strained against the limitations of this dimension was inflicted tenfold on his unfortunate host. But he had to continue: he had to adjust the odds with nanoscopic precision, or Soos would have to pay the price for cosmic carelessness.

With the psychic equivalent of a grunt, he connected the conduit – slowly and subtly – to Fort Acheron. At present, this passageway was closed and nothing could escape through it, but when the time was right…

At last, Axolotl released his grip, his host body almost collapsing with exhaustion as he did so.

"Sorry, Tyler," he panted. He patted his host's chest, attempting to calm the man's racing heart – without much success; had he more power at his disposal, he could have managed such a feat easily, but with circumstances as they were and his strength already stretched to its limits, he could only cajole his mortal vessel as best as he could. "Had to be done," he insisted. "No other way. It's for the best."

 _I_ _hope_ _,_ he thought grimly. _Because if I've miscalculated, I've either doomed Soos to something_ much _worse than .GIFfany… or I've unleashed another Bill on an unsuspecting reality._

* * *

Soos paused, gasping for breath. He'd only been running for a few minutes (as far as he could tell), and already he'd picked up a stitch in his chest. He didn't know how long he had left to run, but he could already hear .GIFfany's footsteps echoing closer and closer – slowly, but only because .GIFfany knew she could afford to take her time.

For a split-second, Soos considered giving in – throwing himself on whatever passed for .GIFfany's mercy and begging her to spare Melody's life in exchange for downloading his brain right then and there.

And then a postcard hit him square in the face.

This threw Soos for a moment: there hadn't been any postcards since .GIFfany showed up, and the road had tried to kill him since then either, so why he'd be receiving any pleas for help from friends and family was a mystery at this point. However, on closer examination, he realized this wasn't a plea for help at all; it wasn't even a postcard, but a carefully-folded letter.

 _Read this very, very carefully, Soos,_ it read. _I'm so sorry I haven't been able to reach you until now, but time and circumstances have been working against me, and I can't work if Bill's directly observing a game in progress. The important thing is that I might just have a way out, but you need to do exactly as I say._

 _At the end of this road, Melody is being held at the very bottom of the pit; don't get sidetracked by the other doors and hallways – they're only there to slow you down. Just take the stairs all the way to the bottom and go straight ahead. Now, to Melody's right, you will find a phone. Whatever you do, DO NOT TOUCH THE PHONE._

 _When .GIFfany catches up with you – and she will catch up – the phone will ring. DO NOT ANSWER IT._

 _I cannot stress this enough:_ _ **DO NOT ANSWER THE PHONE.**_

 _Get GIFany to answer the phone. It doesn't matter how you manage it, but you need to get her to answer it for you._

 _Don't stick around to admire your handiwork. As soon as she picks up the phone, RUN._

You will probably see a black fluid, like oil or tar. DO NOT TOUCH IT. **DO NOT TOUCH THE FILTH.** Also, if you hear any voices, DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM.

 _Your exit is on the other side of the pit floor; get there as quickly as you can. I'll be sure it's ready to open at your approach. The rest is up to you._

 _Wishing you the best of luck,_

 _Mr A_

 _PS: MELODY IS NOT MELODY. DON'T BE FOOLED. Oh, and destroy this message once you've finished reading it, just to be safe._

Soos flipped over the letter, as if expecting the letter to make some sense if he saw it from the opposite angle. But no, there didn't seem to be any light dawning on this particular mystery.

Why was it important that he not answer the phone? What would happen if he did? What would happen if .GIFfany answered it? What was so special about the phone anyway, and why would he need to run once .GIFfany picked it up? What was wrong with Melody?

And who was Mr A?

Soos sighed. He didn't have the answers right now. So far, it seemed like the best thing to do was follow the instructions and wait until it was all over to start asking questions.

So, with nothing else to do, he tore the letter into the tiniest pieces he could possibly manage, and stuffed them into his mouth. Then, he took off running as quickly as possible.

* * *

Time was impossible to measure out here: the blood-red sun never set, nor did it ever rise. No clouds passed overhead, no rain or hail disturbed the angry sky, and night never arrived to offer any recognizable change from the endless daytime. And because the scenery was as flat as a pancake and the ditches all looked the same, there was no way to tell how long Soos ran for. All he knew was that ten miles was a long way to run on a time limit. Naturally, he had to stop and catch his breath every so often; as always, this didn't seem like a problem at first, so long as .GIFfany was still taking her time… but eventually, the distant clank and scrape of her footsteps would echo into earshot, and Soos would be forced to run onwards – never knowing how long he'd waiting or how much longer he had to go.

All he knew was that, a small eternity later, the road ahead of Soos plunged sharply downwards into a deep pit in the ground, a colossal triangle-shaped shaft tunnelling straight down into the bowels of the earth. As far as he could see, this wasn't like the Bottomless Pit back in Gravity Falls – this crater did have a visible bottom to it, shrouded in shadows as it was. And descending along the walls of the pit was a staircase, zig-zagging down the shaft to the bottom.

 _This is it,_ Soos thought, grimly. _She's down there somewhere… and I'm supposed to keep an eye on her. For some reason. Oh well, maybe it'll make sense once it's all over and done with._

He glanced nervously around the road for a moment, checking to see if .GIFfany was any closer; fortunately, it seemed as though she was still toying with him, for the machine-thing was nowhere in sight. So, taking a deep breath to steel himself, he hurried briskly down the staircase and into the depths of the pit.

It was a long descent, one made only longer by Soos' need to occasionally stop for breath and frantically check behind him for pursuers. Every now and again, he'd find himself at a landing where the road forked – sometimes into a door cut into the wall, sometimes into walkways leading to the opposite wall of the pit, sometimes both; maybe it was just Soos' imagination, but some of them looked as though they might be shortcuts to the bottom of the pit… and though Soos occasionally found himself tempted to leave the stairs and take the shortcut, the letter's warning came creeping back to him after about a minute of wandering, and he always returned to the stairs. More than once, the stairs proved too step for his footing, leaving him to tumble blindly into the darkness, banging his knees and elbows painfully against the stone bannisters as he fell. Fortunately, the landings were to save him from breaking his neck on an extended drop, but by then he was aching all over – especially once he finally got up to continue the downward spiral on foot. Regardless of the pain, he continued: on and on he went, down into the gloom of the pit, the light from above slowly bleeding away into shadows as thick as tar, until all that could be seen of the sky was a miniscule triangle no bigger than a basketball.

At long last, he reached the bottom. By now, he was bruised from head to toe, covered in scratches, and so footsore that he could barely walk without wincing. Not that he could walk far: the basement was almost pitch-black, and Soos could only continue onwards with his hands stretched out in front of him in the desperate hope that he was going in the right direction.

Minutes later, he caught a faint glimpse of metal in the dark, and he gradually realized that the far wall was dominated by a huge roller door, large enough to accommodate a decent-sized truck. Fortunately, after a few moments of frantically patting the wall for entrances, he found a more reasonably-sized door to the left of it. Tentatively opening it, Soos was briefly dazzled by the intensity of the light beyond. As his eyes adjusted to the sudden contrast, he gradually became aware of a room the size of a small football field, lit from all angles by searing halogen lights.

And at the end of the room was-

"Melody!"

"Soos!"

And there she stood, chained to the wall but very much alive; she looked a lot paler than usual, and her clothes had clearly seen better days, but otherwise Melody was still in one piece. Throwing caution to the wind and all but forgetting the letter, Soos hurried over and flung his arms around her; in turn, Melody returned the hug (slightly awkwardly, given the manacles) kissing him vigorously on the lips for good measure.

"Are you okay?" he babbled excitedly, once they'd finally parted. "What happened to you? How long have you been here?"

"Well, my arms feel like they've been put through a cheese grater, but otherwise I'm fine. As for the rest… uh, I'll have to get back to you on that. Besides, it's not really important right now: you're here to rescue me, right?"

"Absolutely, dude! Only problem is, how do I get these chains off?"

Melody gestured vaguely to a carved granite control panel sitting on a heavy stone pedestal about ten feet to her right. "See that big lever over there? That unlocks the chains… I think; I'm pretty sure one of the Henchmaniacs using it when they locked me in here. I'd rather not play around with the other controls, though, so hopefully that's all we need."

Soos nodded, and eagerly trotted over to the control panel, hands already raised to flip the lever. But as he hobbled along the bare stone floor, his eyes happened to wander across the pedestal on which the control panel sat – and then he saw it. Sitting on a tiny oak end-table next to the controls, tucked almost out of sight, was a plain desktop telephone.

It was so out of place amongst all the granite and sandstone that Soos actually found himself reaching out to pick up the receiver for a closer look – before he finally remembered the letter's warning. Hastily snatching his hand away from the phone as if it were a live rattlesnake, he stepped back to the control panel and tried not to look at the end-table again. _Don't be hasty, Soos,_ he told himself. _Wait for the phone to ring like the letter said. Just get Melody out of here and ask questions later, dude._

 _Though there's still that weird thing about Melody not being Melody. What was that all about? What did Mr A mean by that? Did he mean that she's not-_

"Soos?" Melody asked softly. "What's wrong?"

Soos looked up from the control, half-expecting to see fear and concern in Melody's eyes; instead, the expression on her face was one of curiosity and… suspicion? At first, Soos could only wonder why she was suddenly so calm about being chained to a wall in an underground dungeon with a giant mechanical monster. But as the seconds dragged by, Soos began to feel a tiny bit nervous: Melody's stare seemed to burrow into him as he hovered over the controls, and the longer her gaze lingered, the more… _unfamiliar_ she seemed. And for the briefest of instants, he thought he could see a glint of hostility in her eyes, but surely that was just his imagination.

" _Soos?"_

"Nothing, nothing. So, uh, this lever, right?"

He flipped the lever, and was immediately rewarded with a loud _click_ as the cuffs around Melody's wrists opened.

"Thanks," she said, absently rubbing her wrists as she stepped away from the dangling manacles. "What do we do now?"

"Well, dude, I think we're supposed to wait here for a few seconds." Seeing the incredulous look on Melody's face, Soos hastily added, "It's okay, though! A little while ago, I got this letter that explained-"

From the other side of the room, there was an earsplitting shriek of metal on metal, a long, drawn-out howl of bladed fingernails on a chalkboard the size of a house. Soos turned just in time to see the roller door behind him buckle dramatically inwards, as if it had been struck by a car; something was clawing and punching at the barrier from the other side, digging colossal furrows and leaving massive craters in the metal with every single blow. Then, with a colossal thud, the entire door was wrenched out of its housing and flung aside… and .GIFfany slowly lumbered into the room, her pixelated avatar grinning wildly from every single monitor.

" _You_ again?" Melody gasped.

"YeS,"said the mechanized monstrosity. "mE aGaIn. So GoOd To SeE yOu AgAiN, HOMEWRECKER." Her eyes shifted in Soos' direction with a faint whir of protesting servos. "I sEe YoU rEaChEd ThE fInIsH lInE fIrSt, SoOs. WhY sO sTiLl AlL oF a SuDdEn?"

Soos froze, eyes straying to the phone. So far, it didn't seem to be in the mood to ring.

"DoN't YoU rEmEmBeR tHe RuLeS, dArLiNg? WhY aReN't YoU rUnNiNg On To YoUr ExIt If YoU dOn'T wAnT tO bE wItH mE?"

 _Because I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm facing down a giant killer robot and waiting for a phone to wring because my life's in the hands of someone dropping letters from the sky, and I still have no idea what's going on. Dude, I'm gonna die… unless of course I learned a thing or two from Mr Pines in the last few years._

Out loud, he said, "Oh you know… I guess I just kinda thought we could all use a get-together to clear our heads and get all the bad feelings off our chests, y'know? I mean, someone's got to make the first step to making peace, right?"

.GIFfany's animatronic face blinked, one eyebrow slowly rising all the way to her hairline as she did so (accompanied by an uneasy creaking sound). "WhAt?"

By now resigned to the fact that he was going to improvise some means of buying time, Soos plunged helplessly onwards. "Hear me out, dudes," he continued. "I seriously think we can make this work. I mean, just because you and me had a bad breakup doesn't mean we can't stay friends, right .GIFfany? And I mean, things might _seem_ pretty irreparable right now, but with a little time I think you and Melody could be like sisters!"

Now it was Melody's turn to look quizzical. "Are… are you feeling okay, Soos?"

"Oh, never better," Soos lied. "Look, I'm just saying that we can all still be friends. I mean, I know we've had some rough times, but if you just give this thing a chance, we can all… um…"

Soos' mind raced. What _could_ they do? So far, the situation didn't seem open to a happy ending.

"Er, live peacefully and… maybe… take down Bill… together?" he concluded limply.

An awkward and distinctly embarrassed silence followed.

And in that silence, the phone began to ring.

As one, all eyes turned in the direction of the ringing phone and the end-table it sat on. Melody was the first to react: "That wasn't there a few minutes ago," she whispered. "What's it doing here?"

The suspicious look was back on her face, and once again, Soos was struck by the sense of _unfamiliarity_ to her… and now that he thought about it, she seemed just a little too calm considering the situation; she'd barely reacted to .GIFfany's arrival, and if anything she seemed more disturbed by the presence of the phone than the presence of the twenty-foot-tall killer robot looming over her. There was definitely something up, something that even Soos couldn't possibly overlook-

"NeVeRmInD tHaT," .GIFfany snapped. "SoOs, Be A dArLiNg AnD aNsWeR tHaT, wOuLd YoU? I dOn'T kNoW wHaT tHaT tHiNg'S dOiNg HeRe Or WhY iT's RiNgInG, bUt As ThE lOsEr Of OuR lItTlE gAmE, i'D sAy It'S oNlY fAiR tHaT yOu ShOuLd AnSwEr It."

Soos actually took an instinctive step towards the phone, before Mr A's warning slammed back into place.

"What if it's for you?" he asked innocently. "Maybe it's Bill calling to congratulate you?"

.GIFfany rolled her eyes –animatronic and pixelated. "If BiLl WaNtEd To CoNgRaTuLaTe Me, He'D jUsT APPEAR AND CONGRATULATE ME IN PERSON. He'S wAtChInG eVeRyThInG, rEmEmBeR?"

 _Unless he isn't this time._

"But what if it's a surprise?" Soos suggested, once again improvising like crazy. "Bill's always liked surprises: I've known him all summer, dude, and he's always loved setting up practical jokes and parties. I mean, you should have seen the time he pretended to be me and bumped into me while we were exploring Mr Pines' brain!"

"If YoU kNoW bIlL sO wElL, sOoS, tHeN wHaT's ThE sUrPrIsE?"

"Errrrr…" Soos' mind raced, voice briefly wobbling out of control as he struggled to think of an answer. "It's… it's… it's an engagement party!"

.GIFfany blinked, her pixelated pupils widening to the size of dinner plates. "An… EnGaGeMeNt PaRtY?" she asked softly. The look of saccharine malice was gone from her face, her expression now alight with excitement – maybe even hope.

"Absolutely, dude. I mean, you said yourself that I lost the race, so now I have to be with you forever. So, Bill's probably got a party ready for you just to celebrate the big win, right?"

"YoU dOn'T sOuNd ToO uPsEt By ThAt, SoOs. HaVe YoU… cHaNgEd YoUr MiNd?"

Soos shrugged, hoping against hope that he'd learned enough about lying from Mr Pines to make this work. "Why not?" he said, doing his best to sound weary (not all that hard, given how badly his calf muscles ached at that moment). "Like you said, I lost, dude. What's the point in fighting? I might as well play along. After all, it's not as if there's much else left to do."

A wicked-looking smile spread across GIFfany's pixelated faces, her animatronic mask offering a mad, twitching leer. "Oh DaRlInG, dArLiNg SoOs," she purred. "I kNeW yOu'D cOmE aRoUnD eVeNtUaLly, My LoVe. YoU wOn'T rEgReT tHiS; yOu AnD I WiLl hAvE eTeRnItY tO gEt To KnOw EaCh OtHeR _sO_ mUcH bEtTer…"

"So long as you agree the call's for you-"

"ObViOuSlY."

"-and as long as Melody isn't hurt."

"Of CoUrSe. WhAt InTeReSt WoUlD I HaVe In HeR nOw ThAt I'vE gOt YoU?"

Soos idly glanced over at Melody, half-expecting to see her upset, disturbed or at very least confused by this latest development. Instead, her face was still frozen in a look of deepest mistrust, her eyes narrowed to slits, her mouth etched into an unpleasant-looking frown. The longer Soos examined that expression, the more alien it seemed: there was no trace of the kindness and concern he'd seen in her when they'd first met, only cold, unsympathetic scrutiny.

Meanwhile, .GIFfany contentedly lumbered over to the phone, extending a series of metallic tendrils from her right hand to pluck the phone from its housing. But at the last moment, she paused and glanced over her shoulder at Soos and Melody; then, she extended her left hand, and a solid wall of silvery creepers snaked from her armour-plated palm to form a dense web of cables between Soos and the exit. Even from here, it was painfully apparent that every single tendril was lined with razor-blades, most of them packed so tightly together that it'd be impossible to slip past the web without being sliced open.

"JuSt In CaSe YoU gEt CoLd FeEt," .GIFfany giggled.

And with that, she wrapped a tendril around the phone, raised it to one of the miniature microphones haloing her shoulders, and trilled "HeLlOoOoO?"

As if in answering, there was a burst of static loud enough to be heard on the other side of the room, and a thick gout of black oil shot out of the phone's receiver, instantly coating .GIFfany's face and shoulders with a dense splatter of bubbling gunk. Immediately, .GIFfany wrenched the phone away in disgust and brought one massive hand down on the phone's housing, crushing it into mangled plastic wreckage. However, this did little to stop the flow of fluid: the receiver only went on spraying black gunk like an out-of-control garden hose, drenching the horrified mecha's outstretched arm and monitors with more of the stuff. At long last, she tore the receiver apart, finally stopping the gush.

For a moment, .GIFfany could only stand there, befouled from head to toe with gunk, a look of shock and revulsion stamped on every single face on her monitors. Then, as Soos watched, the black gunk began to vanish – not flowing off .GIFfany's body like any ordinary fluid, but being _absorbed_ into her.

The giant mechanical body began to shudder, twitching violently as the fluid permeated her: .GIFfany's free arm swung erratically across the room, as if struggling for a grip to steady herself; gears and pistons groaned in protest, the servos letting out a long, tortured squeal as the spasms continued; deafening spurts of microphone feedback white noise blasted from her speakers; static raced across her monitors, briefly obscuring her faces – all of which were now locked an expression that Soos had never seen .GIFfany wear before: _fear._

"ALERT!" she hollered. "INFILTRATION DETECTED! SECURITY PROTOCOLS OVERRIDDEN! UNABLE TO STOP SPREAD! CRITICAL ERROR! SYSTEM COMPROMISED! SYSTEM FjFHDH92HR92HDNFJDNMMDF-"

.GIFfany's voice rose to a scream of what sounded almost like pain, her pixelated mouths gaping open in identical expressions of purest terror, several monitors breaking down into storms of static as they did so. Outside the monitors, her free arm flew to her head, bladed fingers clawing wildly at her animatronic face as if trying to dig the oil out of her body with her bare hands. In the end, her efforts were fruitless and succeeded only in tearing her entire face off, baring the metal skull beneath it for all to see.

Soos, remembering Mr A's warning not to stick around and admire his handwork, looked around for an exit – but found none: .GIFfany's other arm was still blocking the door with its web of tendrils, and trying to creep around her wildly-thrashing free arm and all its blades would have been suicidal.

Then, he heard coherent speech finally escape from the wail of electronic gibberish erupting from the mecha's voicebox, and he turned around just in time to witness what could only be .GIFfany's last moments: all but one of her monitors were clouded with static, the remaining set barely functional, a flickering, stuttering mess. .GIFany's avatar was soaked with oozing black fluid, the pixelated oil coating her arms, chest and neck… and it was slowly crawling higher, oozing over her jawline towards her face.

She was crying, Soos realized, digital tears streaming down her face and mingling with the oil; and as she looked out at the world one last time, her eyes alighted on Soos.

"SoOs," she whimpered. "PlEaSe… HeLp Me… I'm… FrIgHtEnEd…"

Then her eyes turned as black as night, and her image dissolved into static.

For five heartstopping seconds, .GIFfany's mechanical body remained as still and silent as the grave. And then, just as Soos was beginning to wonder if it was safe to move, there was another burst of feedback from the speakers, and a voice spoke: it was a man's voice, deep and hissing with white noise, almost _bubbling_ with intensity.

" **I am the Pirate Signal,"** it said. **"Let me in."**

As one, the monitors sprang to life: once again, a pixelated figure emerged from the static, but instead of .GIFfany's bright pink schoolgirl avatar, the shape that now appeared on the monitors was little more than a vaguely human shaped silhouette. It had no face, no recognizable features in any way – except, of course, for the pair of glasses hovering around eye level, but they were little more than blank white holes cut in the face. And yet, despite the fact that this thing had no eyes visible behind the glasses, Soos knew immediately that it was watching him _very_ closely.

" **Hiya, Soos,"** it said. **"I'm John. Thanks for the new body: surfing through meatspace is such a drag, like wading through mud. Tech is so much better, so much smoother. But you know all about that, don't you, Soos?"**

Soos said nothing: he remembered Mr A's warning all too well.

" **A little shy? No problem. I was shy, too, when this all began: always picked last, always lonely, always on the outside looking in. But it gets easier. Everything's easier with a little help from a friend. You'll see. I'll show you. You'll be so much happier with us…"**

From somewhere just on the periphery of hearing, there was the faint trickle of water; following the sound to its source, Soos realized that it wasn't water at all: black fluid was pouring out of the giant robot's body and pooling on the floor, forming a sizeable puddle… and unless Soos was horribly wrong, the puddle was starting to creep towards him.

Whatever this stuff was, it wasn't oil: to the best of Soos' knowledge, normal oil didn't sprout tentacles.

 _The Filth._

Then, without warning, the advancing ooze stopped in mid-creep. Suddenly, John's attention was focussed entirely on Melody.

" **Got a girlfriend, Soos? Good for you. Everyone needs somebody. I remember the special lady in** _ **my**_ **life: she made me who I am today and more. She took away my fear, granted me rebirth in the Morninglight, paved the way for apotheosis; she gave me everything… and all she asked in return was for me to carry a message. It's a simple message, Soos, but you wouldn't believe the skinless truths it unveiled. It's a story to make astronomers pluck out their eyes and musicians deafen their ears; it's a story to make mortals into gods and make monsters of gods, to turn the sun black and the sand red-red-red. It's called the zero-point pathogen, Soos. I can show it to you, if you'd care to come a little closer…"**

Soos instinctively took a step back.

" **Your special lady's already made you a better man, am I right? Of course she has. I'm doubt even your friends at the Mystery Shack ever pushed you so far. She's made you do things you wouldn't even dream of doing, fight enemies you wouldn't have dared face, right? How sweet."**

John regarded Melody with something akin to amusement. **"Pity this isn't her, though,"** he chuckled.

Soos very slowly looked from John to Melody, and finally realized what Mr A had meant. The look of anger and fear on her face was not even remotely human anymore: normal muscles simply weren't meant to move that way. The sight was so disturbing that Soos couldn't help but back off a step, finally recognizing that this was _not_ Melody.

" **Oh yes, there's energy to this girl. I can taste it, live wires a-sparkin' and generators in meltdown. Construct, am I right? Something created, yes? Something… copied. Copied very badly, I suspect. Blurry photocopy of an out-of-focus photograph taken by a blind man. Yessssss. Where's the real Melody, little sing-song? Locked up? Oh, I'm willing to bet on that."**

"Melody" said nothing. The look of bilious hate on her face said _everything_.

" **I'm new to this dimension, little sing-song. .GIFfany's databanks told me a lot, but I could always stand to know more. Let's have a little heart-to-heart, you and me. Let's talk about Bill."**

Suddenly the web was gone from the wall, and John's arm was edging towards the woman who couldn't possibly be Melody – and in that moment, Soos seized the opportunity to run: launching himself over the puddle of Filth and ducking under John's arm, he ran for the door as fast as his aching legs could carry him. Behind him, he heard Not-Melody footsteps sprinting after him, but for once he no longer cared if she was keeping up: had things been different, maybe he'd have doubted John, but after all the warnings and uncanny fears he'd been receiving over the past few minutes, he was fresh out of incredulity.

Charging down the dark hallway, he flung himself past the staircase and towards the opposite end of the cellar, where Mr A's exit hopefully lay. Right then and there, he was deaf to the sounds of Not-Melody in pursuit, to the rapid-fire thud of John following suit, even to the watery gush of Filth pouring into reality. All he cared about was getting _away._

Just as he was starting to wonder if there _was_ an end to the cellar, the air in front of him seemed to ripple – and then split open, revealing a colossal vortex burrowing deep into the world, vivid metallic gold in colour and bright enough to banish the shadows. All but collapsing with relief, Soos took a step forward, ready to step into the vortex and be gone-

And then Not-Melody grabbed him by the shoulder, hauling him back from the edge in a vicelike grip. "It's time you calmed down," she snarled.

"Let go of me!"

"I don't think so. I don't know how that thing got here and how you knew it would be here, but we're going to stay put until Bill gets back: he'll be able to get rid of _whatever_ that thing is, and he'll be able to put you back where you belong… and he's going to have a lot of fun making you suffer for ruining this game."

Soos twisted around, trying to force Not-Melody's hand off his shoulder, but her grip refused to budge: whatever she really was, she was obviously a lot stronger than any ordinary human being. So, he tried another approach: "We can't stay here, dude," he whispered urgently. "I don't know what that thing is, but we've got to get outta here before-"

"Weren't you listening, Soos? You're. Not. Going. Anywh-"

From somewhere behind them, there was a muffled _thud,_ and Not-Melody's grip suddenly went slack, her eyes gaping open in a horrified stare. Behind her, John stood perhaps twenty feet away, an obsidian ocean of Filth following in his wake; there was a tendril projecting from his mechanical fist, and its barbed tip had punched clean through Not-Melody's back and out through her chest, lodging there.

" **Nice girlfriend, Soos,"** said John, cheerily. **"Mine now."**

And then the tendril abruptly withdrew, reeling Not-Melody back across the cellar and into the depths of the oily ocean. She had just enough time to let out one last scream before the Filth swept over her, a multitude of tentacles hauling her under the surface and out of sight. Soos looked away, trying to not to think what might be happening to the _real_ Melody, trying not to imagine the same Filthy death repeated on her.

Stepping into the portal, he let the currents of energy carry him away, barely looking up from the glittering void as the gateway slammed shut behind him. He didn't know if the portal before him led to safety or if it was just a trick by Bill. Right then, he didn't really care.

 _Anywhere_ was better than the road.

And as a new world loomed at the other end of the portal, it occurred to Soos that, wherever he was going, maybe the real Melody wasn't too far away...

* * *

A/N: Up next - a test of morality and restraint reaches fever pitch, and a player is forced to consider the fallen villains in their life. Or if you prefer...

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See you soon, boys and girls...


	16. Into The Skinner Box

A/N: Aaaaaaaaargh! Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Jolly Yuletide, Satisfactory Saturnalia, Creepy Krampusnacht, and all the other wonderful December festivals be good to you and your loved ones, and have a Happy New Year! (collapses in a heap) Ladies and gentlemen, it's been... eventful. The last two months have been filled with work, sickness, stress, and everything else that can be crammed in the leadup to Christmas. I wish I could say I hadn't seen this coming, but after the dose of the flu in November and all the delays _that_ cause, I knew that releasing anything in December was going to be a trial, having tried and failed to do it before. But, I wanted to give you all a present - so here we have the latest chapter!

 **Hourglass Cipher:** Thank you so much for your lovely review, and I hope I haven't left you waiting too long! I hope this latest chapter lives up to the hype!

 **Kraven the Hunter:** Yep - I told you it would be someone unexpected. I could make jokes about Eldritch Horrors called "Bill," but John is a little bit different. Meanwhile, I _love_ the idea of Melody as a wristwatch, it's so beautifully twisted! Thank you so much for the review!

 **toolman19:** Aye, and it's kind of worse when you get to know the nature of the Filth. And yes, this is definitely a situation that cannot simply return to normal. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this latest installation!

 **Northgalus2002:** So sorry I couldn't update sooner, the world went mad in November. But to answer your question, there's actually going to be a few tests of morality in the next couple of chapters... and I hate to say it, but Axolotl probably won't be creating another Bill. Where the Filth is concerned, there are worse things possible. As horrible as he was in canon, and as horrible as he can be across the worlds of fanfic, at least Bill wasn't in the pocket of someone _nastier..._ (ominous music) Once again, I hope this chapter proves just as entertaining - and intriguing!

 **OMAC001:** Without saying much, John is a relatively young monster, but the Filth itself is eons old, and tied to something far nastier and far more horrific than John himself. As for what this something is, you'll have to wait and see. So... Hindrance and occasional Help.

 **Megahammer11:** Ouch! If it helps, read in bright daylight, well away from any possible sources of insects, and play something reasonably pleasant in the background. If this doesn't work, in summary: Wendy keeps travelling onwards, becoming more and more exhausted until she runs into her family, all possessed by eldritch parasites from beyond our reality. They want to kill her and/or make her one of them. Faced with a choice between killing her family and spending the rest of her days being hunted down, she picks the latter and legs it. Please let me know if this helps. Also, as much as I'd like, cutting these damn chapters short has been... really tricky. I keep trying, but there's just so much to detail... and that's even before I start adding my preludes! Hope you enjoy this latest chapter, though.

 **Guest:** I always look forward to your reviews! I'm so glad you liked the buildup to Not-Melody, John, and the codes - I had a lot of fun writing about it. And yes, that's Mr A's host alright! Well done. I hope this next chapter lives up to the high standards you've come to expect, and I humbly beg forgiveness for the delay.

 **Other Guest:** Thanks so much for the lovely review - I'm a big fan of the "What if Bill won" tales, and it means a lot to be rated so highly!

 **LoyalTheorist:** Don't worry, we're onto a more optimistic stretch; I can't spoil everything, but I can say that Dipper and Wendy _won't_ be half dead. Granted, they won't be doing too well in the meantime, but you'll have to wait to see just how much suffering we can leverage from that chapter... BWAHAHA!

So, without further ado, the latest chapter - my present to all my viewers, reviewers, favouriters and followers! Feel free to furnish me with your opinions, insights, theories, critiques and corrections - especially to the insomnia-induced typos that creep up on me in the dead of night.

Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls isn't mine... and neither is anything of the crossover material.

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* * *

 _Why the hell do I have to be a doll for this game?_

 _Why can't I just be an ordinary human being? It's not as though it'd make things any easier for me; true, I'm up against my age-regressed dad and my almost clinically brain-dead mom, but it's not like making me human again would give me any real advantage over them. Seriously, this "game" of yours gets more obnoxious every day, Bill._

It had only been a few short weeks since the sick little contest had begun, and Pacifica was already sick to death of it all.

The game was all-consuming, unceasing, and utterly without mercy, demanding almost as much of its participants as it did its inevitable victims; every day, there were challenges to face, pop quizzes to puzzle through, obstacle courses (of a sort) to run, and regular interrogations to endure. Each of the three contestants were tested time and again for their potential as true scions of the Northwest legacy, every aspect of their character measured and studied for any traits that might make them worthy of the Northwest family throne – or unsuitable for the role of Bill's favourite minion: chief among the valued qualities was ruthlessness, followed closely by pride, Machiavellian intelligence, cruelty, a disregard for the rights and emotions of others, a pronounced sense of superiority to those outside the family (with the exception of the family's patron, naturally)… and rarest of all, the ability to feed Bill Cipher's bottomless appetite for chaos without flinching, faltering or failing.

The rules had been made abundantly and infuriatingly clear: each aspect of their character was to be tested time and again, and once the Henchmaniac examiner of that particular challenge was satisfied that they'd proved themselves, the winner was to be awarded with a barb of the Northwest throne and a fraction of its otherworldly might; unfortunately, this also meant having a jagged mobile chunk of metal permanently merged with the winner's flesh, with all the agonizing pain and lingering aches that came with it.

Only once the winner had won every single barb could they become the head of the family and claim the near-godlike power of the throne itself – the sole caveat being that Bill effectively owned them from then on.

This in itself would have been bad enough, but the Henchmaniacs had decided to make the contest a thousand times more excruciating by ensuring that the challenges never truly ended. Every little thing they did, every habit, every tic, every behavioural quirk was jealously scrutinized for any sign of traits that might make them unsuitable for the position, adding a maddening sense of paranoia to the proceedings. It was impossible to tell when you were being watched, only that the Henchmaniacs could peek in on you whenever they pleased and study everything about you – even when you were asleep. In fact, it got to the point that Pacifica could only assume that they were _always_ watching her, and was forced to keep up the pretence of being a "true Northwest" at all times.

As for mother and father… well, they didn't cope very well. In point of fact, they didn't cope at all: mother's already-fragile composure had cracked violently on the first day of Weirdmageddon, and the ordeal of her husband's fall from grace had shattered it into a billion pieces; meanwhile, father had never recovered from losing his position as family patriarch, his ego raw and bloodied from his descent, his sanity stretched to the breaking point by having to endure the pain of being forced to first sit and then vacate the Northwest throne.

His regression, followed by the humiliating discovery of his own childhood conditioning, had just about destroyed him. Of course, he still wanted to win the contest, still wanted to reclaim all the glories he'd won as an adult and then some, and with an effort of will he could even mimic the effortless confidence he'd possessed in his days as the patriarch… but after all he'd been made to suffer, Preston Northwest just didn't have an ounce of real confidence left in him anymore.

Needless to say, almost every single test degenerated into a spectacular display of neurosis sooner or later. Mother could barely bring herself to respond to the simplest inquiry without lapsing into a catatonic trance, and what answers she could bring to the table were little more than nonsensical gibberish.

Father appeared to do well at first, once he was given a properly fitted suit and a chance to recover his equilibrium anyway: he aced the pop quizzes easily, answering almost every single question without a moment's hesitation and dazzling the examiners with one perfect example of ruthlessness after another. But when the time came for him to actually act, to _inflict_ the horrors he'd spoken of on the targets that the Henchmaniacs had summoned up, father's confidence left him. Their mocking laughter disarmed him instantly, his attempts at appearing fearsome were dismissed as childish fancy, and getting violent only left him wilting under their accusing stares; the fact that all of the victims were taller than him only made him feel a thousand times more insecure.

"I can't do this while I'm a child!" he'd wailed, face streaked with tears of bitterest humiliation. "Please, I just need to be made into an adult again! Restore me to my true age and I'll be able to hurt them any way you want! _Just make me a grown-up again! I WANNA BE A GROWN-UP!"_

The Henchmaniacs responded by promptly sending him back to his room with a failing grade.

At night, Pacifica could hear him crying softly as he struggled to come to terms with what he'd become and how far he'd fallen. Often, he'd try to repair his punctured self-esteem through words alone, muttering little slogans to himself like _"I am a Northwest, no matter how old I am! I can be a thousand times better than I was today!"_ and _"I got to the top once, I can get there again!"_ He recited all his past achievements in a seemingly endless mantra of dates and company names, as if trying to remind himself how powerful he'd once been might make him powerful again. But in the end, he always fell back on dreams: every night, just before he subsided into a whimpering, trembling slumber, he would whisper _"It's just a dream. It's not real. Bill wouldn't really do this to us, not after all we've done for him. When I wake up, I'll be an adult again, Weirdmageddon will never have happened, and the Northwests will be in charge again. Everything's going to be okay…"_

But of course, he'd always awoken from his slumber to find that he was still a child, still a prisoner, and still in the midst of Weirdmageddon.

And as for Pacifica herself… well, that was a different matter altogether. Like her father, she knew all the answers to the questions posed to her, having been extensively tutored on them by the man himself in gentler days: she knew how best to display the family's pride and elitism; she knew the art of the put-down, the social sabotage, the making of pariahs; she knew how to carve a place for herself in the spotlight, to make herself appear imperious and all-commanding. To her eternal shame, she even understood a little about the ruthlessness the family businesses demanded – and how to inflict it if necessary. Ostensibly, she had every advantage father possessed; she'd even been transformed in a similar fashion, and on the face of things she might even have the same weaknesses as father.

Then again, being forced to go through this test in the body of a doll was aggravating, but not cripplingly so: true, the reduction in height was a handicap at times, and the lack of sensation to her glossy porcelain skin made her feel even more confined than before – as if her flesh itself had become a prison from which she could not escape, a tailor-made jail cell so much more restrictive than Bill's demented playground.

Of course, there was one significant matter that proved just as much a motivation as it was a discouragement: the mysterious Mr A's letter. True, it had given her hope, but it had also left her with an entire warehouse of questions that nobody could answer save for Mr A himself – and he hadn't sent any more notes after the first.

If Pacifica had read correctly (and there was no way of checking, since Pacifica had destroyed the original just to make sure nobody could find it) then there was a way out of the game: there was a way to win without becoming Bill's pawn, to see Dipper and Mabel again and maybe, _just_ maybe save the day… but of course, it involved winning just enough barbs to escape. Problem number one: how many barbs was enough? She knew she couldn't win the entire throne, but just how many barbs would be safe to accept without Bill turning her into a finger puppet? Problem number two: how was she going to manage an escape with the power she'd earned from the throne? Was this just something she'd have to figure out for herself once she got a barb or two?

More to the point – problem number three: could she even trust Mr A? For all she knew, this could be just another one of Bill's twisted jokes: maybe following the instructions was just another way that the crazy corn chip could get his claws into her – or worse. And of course, she couldn't exactly ask anyone, not without giving the entire game away and ruining her only chance to escape and save the others. For now, the only thing to do was play along… and be ready for the inevitable double-cross.

 _Just like old times,_ Pacifica mused absently: at the age of five, after being subjected to the _things_ that had accompanied the bell, little Pacifica had confided in one of the servants about how she really felt about the bell. Half an hour later, she'd been summoned to her father's study, where she quickly discovered that the servant had told her parents everything. Once the punishment was over and done with, father had used the incident as a perfect example of how the plebeian masses could only be trusted if bound through money and never-delivered promises. For the longest time, Pacifica had believed him, regarding the common peoples of the world with "justified" contempt and fearing the consequences of failing to live up to her parents. Now, though… now all she had was "Trust No-One."

 _Play along, and be ready for the inevitable double-cross._

But… if the barbs could make her as powerful as Mr A claimed, perhaps it'd give her the power to wriggle out of whatever was being planned for her; all things considered, it probably wouldn't allow her to turn the tables on Bill – after all, the rabid tortilla was a lot of things, but stupid was quite clearly not one of them – but maybe it'd be _just_ enough to give her an edge.

Whatever the case, Pacifica had one significant advantage over her competitors in this little game.

She knew how to disguise her true self: ever since father had initiated her into the ways of the family, she'd learned to hide her feelings, to mimic happiness when she was lonely, to make herself seem impossibly confident when all thoughts of a brighter future seemed pointless, to conceal her fears behind a mask of elitism and insults, to lie so convincingly that nobody could possibly doubt her sincerity. Even in the days after Dipper had revealed her family's true history to her, she'd still been able to keep up the pretence of aristocratic self-assurance – even as she grappled with her own anger and wounded pride.

And that was her strength in the contest. She could pretend to be someone in the spotlight, to keep up the façade behind closed doors, even when the Henchmaniacs were watching; she could win where mother and father failed. Oh, sure, maybe father had known the same art as a child – after all, he'd been conditioned in much the same way as her – but had forgotten the subtleties. Perhaps, somewhere along the line, he'd forgotten the difference between performance and personality.

 _But that's the danger, isn't it?_ She thought feverishly. _The longer you wear a mask, the better it fits. Your face changes under it… until you take it off and find that there's no difference between you and the disguise anymore. It's happened to you before, and it can happen again if you're not careful. And that's the danger of the game: win too much, and it won't matter even if you_ do _escape._

* * *

She wasn't proud of her first victory.

The days leading up to it had been bad enough, what with the gruelling uphill march through Amorphous Shape's questionnaire: after almost a week of listening to the Henchmaniac's smug interrogation and her own monotonous replies, she was just about ready to start headbutting her way through the wall. The fact that most of it involved discussions of assaulting homeless people and variations on the prisoner's dilemma with Dipper and Mabel only made it a million times more dispiriting.

But when the time came to actually perform the practical exercise – and prove that she was as ruthless as she claimed – Pacifica had almost faltered.

Laid out before her was the very worst of the Northwest family's ideals made manifest, a living sea of dull-eyed barely-sentient proles dependent on the guidance and patronage of the wealthy in order to survive, a multitude of victims in dishwater-grey uniforms just waiting for a victimizer to descend. Her assigned task was to walk among the crowd and enact the typical Northwest attitude upon them – but this time stripped of even the shallow charm that father wore at social events: she was to be proud, dignified, insulting, arrogant, and utterly without empathy. In short, she was to treat them as badly as Nathaniel Northwest had treated the unfortunate lumberjacks of Gravity Falls, if not worse.

In other words, to win the test, she'd have to become the _old_ Pacifica – exactly the way her father had wanted her… and this time, operating in a vision of reality where the Northwests had at long last pierced the final barrier between them and ultimate power and arrived in a world entirely subservient to their whims; a world that would not resist their commands, nor protest their decisions, or even imagine limiting their powers; a world designed to serve as nothing more than a plaything for the Northwest family to do with as they pleased.

 _So this is what you wanted, father?_ she'd asked herself. _Is this what the family_ always _wanted? I mean, it wasn't enough for us to worship Bill as a god: we wanted to_ be just like him. _It's not just our family name that's broken – it's the entire family, ever since Nathaniel Northwest took power!_

For the longest time, Pacifica hadn't been able to act. Looking down at that ocean of helpless figures, all she'd been able to see was the betrayed look on Dipper's face, and even as the Henchmaniacs shouted at her to get on with it, all she could hear were the words "another link in the world's worst chain." Ironically, it was the thought of the letter's promise – her one opportunity to escape – and her fear of never seeing Dipper again that had finally driven her down the hill from Northwest Mansion and into the sea of proles.

And there, for perhaps twenty minutes, she'd been her father's daughter.

Declaring herself the undisputed master of the proles awaiting her, she'd given orders, loudly and imperiously – for food and drink, for entertainment, for anything that might impress the examiners watching her. She'd even commanded that the proles carry her around on a sedan chair made of living human bodies. Any proles too slow to act had been subjected to her unbridled wrath: she'd screamed, she'd insulted, she'd humiliated, she'd even kicked a few of them. She'd called them every single name her father had ever used against the poor and underprivileged, and let them know in no uncertain terms that they were a thousand times less than her. Just to finish off, she'd demanded that the proles kneel before her and kiss her feet – which they did.

None of them resisted. None of them said anything in protest. None of them spoke at all. They simply followed her commands, and unless specifically ordered not to, they _stared._ And staring into those innocent, guileless eyes, Pacifica couldn't help but feel as though they were judging her; in fact, if she looked for long enough, she could easily imagine those bland, anonymous faces taking on different features – until it was no longer a helpless stranger she was abusing, but a friend: Dipper, Mabel, Soos, Wendy, Mr Pines, the rebels at the Mystery Shack, the people who'd helped her to realize what friendship _was_.

And when the Henchmaniacs had begun to applaud, it had taken every last atom of Pacifica's willpower not to vomit.

They'd congratulated her, told her that Bill would be proud, and taken her to the throne for the first of many barbs. There, as mother and father had looked on with sick, despairing eyes, Pacifica had been allowed to kneel before the throne and bare her back to it, allowing a hooked barb to telescope from the left armrest and burrow deep into her back – an invasion of her body made all the more alien and disturbing for the simple fact that it didn't hurt at all; she could still _sense_ it there, which was arguably even worse, but there was no pain whatsoever. The only "pain" lay in what she'd done to earn this monstrous reward.

 _It's just an act,_ she'd told herself, as the barb had slowly earthed itself in the porcelain-flesh. _This isn't really me. I can pretend to be whoever Bill wants to be, but I am still myself. No matter how many barbs I earn, no matter how many times I pretend to be my father's daughter, I'm still a good person. I'm not just another Northwest. I'm not another one of Bill's pawns. I'm_ me.

Whatever the case, the first barb definitely gave her power: the hook of the throne granted her a form of telekinesis, allowing her to move objects at a distance – though never anything larger than the average chair – and with it came a simple but impressive ability to manipulate matter itself. Through this power, she could craft small objects out of the surrounding environment, sculpting available matter into new shapes with the power of her mind; with an effort of will, she could also destroy, erasing other objects by rendering them down into inert matter.

It was a basic power and, once again, deliberately limited to small, inoffensive uses. Pacifica found that she could create books, for example, but couldn't quite get the hang of generating the text inside the covers, for the pages always emerged covered in a meaningless hodgepodge of squiggles. But this limited gift wasn't the point of that first reward, of course: it was there to whet her appetite, to make her long for more barbs and the abilities they could grant her, to inspire her to commit greater atrocities in pursuit of power.

After all, father had done similar things to her when she was little: good behaviour, proper snobbery and effortless winning had been rewarded with lavish celebrations, extravagant presents, even a rare and genuine expression of approval from her parents (approval, but never affection); failure was punished with the bell – and all the _things_ that it brought to mind. And for all she knew, that was the way father had been trained when he was a child; perhaps _his_ father had been trained the same way, too, a chain of conditioning stretching all the way back to the start of their family.

And now Bill Cipher was starting the whole process all over again, this time conditioning Pacifica to enjoy torture and cruelty. Here, she wasn't a human being or even a doll: she was a rat in a Skinner box, rewarded for now but always left with the threat of punishment on the horizon.

In the end, she could only return to her room in silence – to rest in preparation for the next day's questionnaires. She wanted to scream, to throw up, to shatter glass, to rage and tell Bill Cipher to go to hell. She wanted to beg forgiveness from the proles, to insist that she didn't want to hurt anyone, to cut herself open and tear out the hook. But she couldn't: the Henchmaniacs were watching. Acting up would mean a black mark on her record. Acting up would mean losing her chance to see Dipper and Mabel again.

Instead, Pacifica had simply stood in front of her mirror, her doll's face sculpted into an expressionless mask, and let her newly-developed powers flow out across the room.

And as books, vases, potted plants and cushions began to orbit her body like planets in an unearthly telekinetic waltz, she'd told herself, _I am not just another link in the world's worst chain. I will escape. I will see Dipper and Mabel again. I will not forget myself._

Over and over again, like a prayer: _I am not just another link in the world's worst chain._

With time and repetition, she could almost believe it.

* * *

On her second practical test, Pacifica had walked among the proles again, and at the instruction of the Henchmaniacs, recruited them to serve at Northwest Mansion – not as servants, but as guards. Arming her newly-hired guards with blackjacks and handcuffs, she'd stationed them around her parents' quarters and prevented mother and father from leaving for any reason. Any resistance from father was met with use of the buzzer. Impressed, the Henchmaniacs awarded her with a second barb, granting her the power to levitate at will – "a sign of your superiority over others, Lady Northwest," Amorphous Shape had cackled.

 _I am not just another link in the world's worst chain._

On her third test, Pacifica had sent out her guards to inspect the proles and had them gather the population into a single cohesive marching group, advancing across the plain like an army of ants; anyone caught marching out of step was to be dragged off to the cellars of Northwest Mansion, where they would stay until Pacifica felt they had learned their lesson. Beatings were conducted down there, but never any murders, thank god. Nonetheless, Pacifica was still awarded another barb, expanding her senses and allowing her to magically review her new domain with a passing thought.

 _I am not just another link in the world's worst chain._

On her fourth test, she had demanded that the proles begin the construction of a vast ziggurat in her honour. For the next few days, she oversaw the process of quarrying, cutting and transporting the stone to the building site at the foot of the mansion's hill, demanding unending diligence from every prole at work: anyone caught "slacking" or making a mistake was viciously flogged by prole guards. For weeks on end, the air was filled with nothing but the rumble of magical construction equipment, the thud and crunch of stone being laid, and the distinctive crack of the whip; for days, Pacifica feared that one of the proles might die, that she might have done the unforgiveable over the course of the test – and for every night, her dreams were filled with the thunderous roars of the Lumberjack ghost as he cried out for vengeance once more. But when the scaffolding was finally cleared away and the finished ziggurat unveiled, the proles had all survived – and Pacifica was awarded with her fourth barb: pyrokinesis, granting her fire at her fingertips; though the flames were never bigger than a decent-sized campfire, this was once again a taste of greater power, another temptation to commit greater crimes in pursuit of the next sickly-sweet taste of magical dominion.

 _I am not just another link in the world's worst chain._

Now it was her fourth week of contests, and, as she absently exercised her newly-acquired powers upon the contents of her bedroom, Pacifica could only wonder what was going to happen next: there were still dozens upon dozens of barbs left on the throne, after all, and given that none of the proles had died yet, there were still so many horrific things the Henchmaniacs could encourage her to do.

And where was Bill?

Over the last few weeks, he'd remained conspicuously absent from the games he'd orchestrated, not even showing up to gloat over father's latest humiliation; instead, the Henchmaniacs were around to speak for him and officiate the challenges he'd created. Needless to say, none of them were interested in answering Pacifica's questions, and regularly threatened to ossify her body and leave her frozen as an inanimate doll if she kept badgering them.

But then, even the Henchmaniacs seemed to be making themselves scarce around this particular end of reality: over the last few weeks, 8-Ball, Pyronica, Teeth, Xanthar, Hectorgon, Keyhole and Lava Lamp had all slipped away for parts unknown, and even Kryptos and Amorphous Shape didn't seem in any mood to stick around Northwest Mansion for any longer than necessary. So, either they were more interested in observing the spectacle of her conditioning than interfering in it… or there was something much more entertaining out there in the realms of Bill's new empire.

So what _was_ drawing their attention away?

And what was to be her next challenge?

And when would she have enough power to escape? The letter had told her only to take what she needed to escape, but how much would be needed to make her way out of this prison? How would she _know?_ After all, it wasn't as if the Henchmaniacs would actually tell her which powers would allow her to stage a jailbreak?

All Pacifica could do was wait, silently punishing herself for having played along, endlessly repeating the mantra – her sole reminder not to lose herself in the contest:

 _I am not just another link in the world's worst chain._

* * *

The briefing for the next test arrived early on the Monday of her fifth week, delivered by a bored-looking Amorphous Shape, who stayed just long enough to dump the briefing folder in Pacifica's orange juice before vanishing off into the ether.

 _Lesson #5: Retribution and the Denial of Empathy,_ it read. _Report to the drawing room and see how much fun you can have just by bringing the pain to someone who really deserves it! Bonus points for death by torture! Remember, though, it's not about the revenge: it's about the callousness. Feel absolutely nothing for your victim, and you win the fifth barb! Please be warned: we're testing your vital signs this time around – if your heart's not in the game, we'll know. No pretending!_

Pacifica's heart sank. They were onto her now. There was nothing she could do to win this test: playing the part insincerely would only net her a massive demerit, and her best chance to escape this hellhole would go sailing merrily out of her grasp… or worse still, the conditioning would work exactly as Bill had intended, and Pacifica would find herself enjoying the torture of another living being; her personality would change to fit the performance, a tiny bit of herself – her _real_ self – would be chipped away, and Pacifica would take one step closer to being Bill's puppet.

But she had no choice: Kryptos and Amorphous Shape were still watching her. By now, she had learned to recognize when a Henchmaniac had left this little corner of reality, and with a little bit of psychic awareness, she could tell that her two remaining examiners were keeping a very close eye on her. So, trying valiantly to keep the despair from registering on her face, she began the long, slow march from the dining hall to the drawing room.

It seemed to take years.

Maybe this was just her own mind playing tricks on her, or maybe Bill was deliberately distorting time in these corridors, just to heighten the sense of dread; whatever the case, her footsteps took over an hour to land (or so it seemed), scattered dust motes hung in the air like snowflakes, and the simple act of pushing open the drawing room door dragged on for what felt like _days –_ and the door itself seemed a thousand times heavier, too.

But when she finally stepped inside the drawing room, she found herself greeted by a sight that caught her almost completely off-guard.

As expected, the luxuriously-furnished room had been outfitted with all the accoutrements of a torture chamber: the lush carpets and Persian rugs had been covered with a thick layer of plastic matting, the astronomically expensive wallpaper hidden beneath a protective shroud of surgical-issue curtains; the furniture had been moved all the way to the back of the room, well behind the curtains, and in their place, glistening stainless-steel trays and gurneys stood in readiness, each one crowded with a vicious assortment of knives, drills, syringes, corkscrews, pliers, scissors, hoses, buzz-saws, siphons, garrottes, vices, and other instruments too complicated to describe. All this was exactly as Pacifica had been dreading, but at the very centre of it all was an element that she honestly hadn't been expecting.

Right at the heart of the torture chamber, strapped into a dentist's chair, was none other than her father.

And if the young Preston Northwest had looked pathetic before, now he looked downright pitiful. His already pallid skin had turned a deathly, cadaverous white from fear, and his gawky little face was streaked with tears – _real_ tears, not the shallow mimicry of grief that the family occasionally employed at funerals, a genuine and undignified display of terrified, horror-stricken sobbing.

"Please," he whimpered. "I know what they told you to do, Pacifica, but… well, please, just _think_ about this for a minute."

Pacifica took a deep breath as she struggled to recover her equilibrium. She hadn't been expecting this: the lesson plan had claimed that she'd be torturing someone who "deserved it," yes, but she'd been thinking that Bill was going to target someone _he_ wanted revenge on – Dipper, say, or Mabel, or at the very least someone out in the world beyond the mansion who'd had the misfortune to inconvenience him. She'd never dreamed that her father, one of her competitors in this little game, would actually be selected as a victim.

Meanwhile, father himself was still rambling on, his voice only growing faster and faster of its own accord as his terror began climbing towards its peak. "You just can't do this to me," he insisted. "I'm… I'm the patriarch of one of the greatest families on the planet; I've led the Northwests from strength to strength through some of the worst recessions and crises ever faced by the United States. I mean, you can't just let it end like this! You can't just _kill me!"_

Pacifica blinked, silently reviewing everything her father had just said. Once upon a time, outpourings like this would have seemed almost normal: in the event that Preston Northwest was too stressed or upset to simply proclaim his usual demands of "I am your father and you will obey me!" he would instead fall back on his achievements, his qualifications, the victories he had won in the name of the family, the empires that he'd toppled, the monopolies he'd forged, the riches that he'd horded… and he'd always ended by glaring down at Pacifica and sneering, "And just what have _you_ achieved in your life, young lady?"

Once upon a time, Pacifica would have thought this was just something all parents did to their children, something that the adults of any family did to ensure order among the younger generation. But since she'd befriended Mabel and gotten to know her family, she'd learned that this was not the case: the members of a family were supposed to care for one another, to listen to their opinions, to try and reach compromise if possible – or at the very least to learn from their mistakes; they were not supposed to fear and mistrust one another. Father's put-downs were not normal; the threats against failure were not normal; the bell _was not normal._

And once again, Pacifica found that tiny little ember of hatred beginning to burn ever-so-slightly brighter. It was a fire that had been left to die ever since the end of that last confrontation with her freshly-regressed father, ever since she'd felt shame over using the buzzer on him. But now…

Suddenly, those monstrous-looking instruments on the trays nearby were beginning to look disturbingly alluring.

Almost robotically, she crept closer; the sudden anger must have shown on her face, for father immediately swallowed hard and spoke again – faster, higher and even more desperate than before. "Pacifica, I'm your father," he blustered. "I've given you _everything –_ your home, your education, your toys, your _friends_ … I mean, do you think you'd have gotten anywhere near the Lucroses State Boarding School if it wasn't for me and this family's influence? You'd never have received all that precious golf training if I hadn't made the right investments! And all those birthday parties? They only happened because I made them possible! Think about what you're doing: you owe me _everything!_ You can't just…"

By now, Pacifica was looming over the nearest of the trays, and it was taking all her available willpower not to bring the whole thing crashing down on father's head.

 _You gave me "everything" as a_ reward _,_ she thought furiously. _You gave me anything that could be used as incentive to make me act and think the same way as you. You never loved me, not really. You never cared about me, never even thought of me as a person: I was just something to mould into the perfect heir. And what about everything I did for_ you? _I saved the lives of every single guest that night! I saved your mansion, and I cleared our legacy of the crime you were happy to keep a secret! I risked everything to save your life, and for a while you even encouraged me to join Ford's circle, but the moment it wasn't convenient to support the rebellion, you went right back to toadying up to Bill! And that's how you repaid me for giving a damn about you._

Now holding one of the nastier-looking blades in her hand, she began to advance on the dentist's chair.

"Let's not be hasty," father babbled. "We… we can help each other! I-I-I mean, I might not have much pull right now, but I know Bill still listens to me every now and again. I can put in a good word for you if you just hear me out: you'll win the contest in a day with my help! I'll give you anything, I promise you! I'll give you anything you could possibly want!"

 _You don't even have to kill him,_ Pacifica told herself. _All you have to do is make him suffer just as much as he made_ _ **you**_ _suffer. Make him feel as miserable and as frightened and as utterly helpless as he made you feel back when he really was in control. Make him scream like the pathetic child that he is. In fact, you don't even have to use your hands: Bill gave you powers like this for a reason…_

Reaching out with the newly-acquired powers of her mind, she seized upon the nearest trays of instruments, and one by one, scooped up every last device available: the scalpel, the rib-spreader, the eyelid-sized pastry cutter, the chisel, the taser, the claw hammer, the baton wrapped in barbed wire, the double-strength sandpaper, the pear of agony, the thumb screws, the ocular acupuncture needles, and even the dreaded buzzer. All of them swooped off their trays and zeroed in on father's helpless face like a swarm of angry locusts, hovering closer and closer until…

"Please… I… I'm sorry! Is that what you want to hear? I'm sorry! For everything I've done to you, _I'm sorry!_ Please, just let me make things right! I'm sorry, alright? I'M SORRY!"

The swarm of hovering instruments paused in mid-air as Pacifica slowly considered what she'd heard. Father was crying again, his eyes full of terrified tears and his face frozen in a rictus of horror… and whatever else she could say about him, he wasn't lying. She knew that fearful, near-earnest look in his eyes all too well: he'd been wearing it back at the Fearamid, when father had been desperate enough to encourage her to join the circle.

And yet…

"Are you?" she asked quietly. "Are you _really_ sorry?"

"I… I…"

"Just one simple answer, father. That's all I need."

If anything, Father began to sob even harder at that point. "I don't know," he said at last. "I don't know! Nothing makes sense anymore! Everything's wrong and nothing makes sense to me: I don't know if I'm sorry or if I should be angry or if I should be trying to work with Bill or if I should just try and find some way to cut my losses and run! It just doesn't make sense!"

He took a deep breath, and gradually began to settle down. "Before all this began, I knew… I _thought_ I knew how the world worked: the family as a whole was to be upheld at any cost; the next generation were to be taught the lessons we'd learned by any means necessary; money and power were the only sanctities in the world, and the only things in life worth pursuing; Bill was our patron, our god, and he would one day arrive on Earth to reward our faithful service... but Bill's here now and… well…"

"You're wondering what was the point of it all," said Pacifica. "You're starting to wonder if everything you spent your life on was a waste of time. You're starting to wonder if you were _wrong."_

Father nodded helplessly.

"Welcome to the club. Maybe now you know how I felt when I walked into that hidden room and found that little _shrine_ to the worst atrocities our family ever committed… or maybe you'll understand just why I was so angry with you when I found that you'd had a bell of your own when you were my age."

She telekinetically shook the buzzer in the air by way of emphasis.

"I… I know, but… it's tradition," said father helplessly. "Every Northwest Child has been trained via behavioural conditioning ever since the science was first developed: it's just… just how we've done things. The family must be upheld, money must be horded and Bill Cipher must be served, and for that to happen, the next generation have to be trained accordingly. _This_ is the only thing that works – daddy told me so!" His eyes widened as he realized what he'd just said. " _Father_ told me so," he amended.

"And you never once questioned? You never stood back and asked, "why do we have to keep doing this?' I mean, you didn't even know if Bill Cipher was even real back then: all you had were a few pre-Depression Era stories and tapestries. I can understand remaining loyal to family, and I can _almost_ understand the power-hungry thing, but why would you continue serving Bill for so many years when you hadn't even seen him in your lifetime? Surely you could have started asking questions once you were too old to have the buzzer used on you."

Father hesitated.

"I did… once," he said softly. "But only at the very end. I've already said we've had to pay the price for demanding so much of Bill, and sometimes the price is our health. We don't always die well, you see. My father was no exception: it took less than a year for the cancer to run its course, and by the end he was barely able to breathe, much less speak. Most of the time, we had to keep him sedated and unconscious, he was in that much pain. But one day, I was sitting by his bedside, double-checking the will and readying the death certificate for the inevitable signage – and then, without warning, he awoke. For just a few minutes, he was just sedated enough to talk without the pain in his chest from crippling him, and right then and there… I don't know why that was the question that sprung to mind, but I wanted to know why the buzzer had been necessary. I wasn't angry or anything like that," he added quickly. "I was just… curious. So I asked him why the behavioural conditioning was needed at all."

"And he looked at me and said, 'It'll all make sense one day. My own father used fingernails on a blackboard in place of a buzzer, and he was alive to see the last time Bill Cipher was summoned, to see his power in action: that summoning, that power, it saved us from the Depression, boy. He gave us things other wealthy men can only dream of. We owe our lives and fortune to him. It'll all be worth it someday, some distant generation… and maybe that generation will be yours to foster. All you have to do is keep the faith and keep the family loyal, and the blessings of the great Bill Cipher will keep flowing… and one day, we will be as gods. One day, it'll all be worth it.' And then he just went silent until the next dose of sedative sent him back to sleep. He died two hours later."

"When I said I questioned the rule only once, I meant it: any doubt I had passed with my father. In the end, I believed everything he told me. How could I not? I was already a man by then, and I'd won a fortune for the family three times over, and all because I'd followed the rules that Bill and Nathaniel Northwest had set for us. So I believed. I worshipped – secretly, but still I worshipped. I raised you exactly as my father and his father before him were raised, because I believed… because I _knew_ it was the only way we could rise to greater heights; because I knew that in this world, only most ruthless individuals prosper and only the most loyal families survive; because I knew that one day Bill Cipher would arrive on this Earth and reward our unquestioning loyalty… and that's how I thought the world worked."

There was a pause, as the echoes slowly died away.

 _Rats,_ thought Pacifica. _That's all we are: a family of rats, all raised to love the Skinner box. Every generation raised for operant conditioning. My god, we were puppets all along._

"But if you don't know what to believe in anymore, why did you keep participating in this contest?" Pacifica asked. "Why bother to take part when you know that you'll only ever be Bill's pawn."

At this, father was suddenly once again on the brink of tears. "Because I don't know what else to do," he said. "I've been the head of this family for so long, I don't know what else to be. It's all I've got. And… well, if I'm not the patriarch, _who am I?"_

He offered a desperate, pathetic smile, perhaps in a desperate attempt to reclaim the triumphant grin he'd worn as an adult… in that moment, just before Preston started to cry again, Pacifica came to a realization: as an adult, tanned and polished and perfectly tailored to the image of a successful CEO, wealthy patriarch and all-around epitome of earthly power, her father had often seemed so different that it was hard to see even the vaguest familial resemblance (but to be fair, it wasn't as if her mother looked much like Pacifica after all the facelifts and hair dye). More to the point, she'd never even seen any photographs of Preston Northwest as a child, for even the prized family portraits from his childhood had been carefully sealed in father's private vault. Now, though… looking at that weird little smile, Pacifica couldn't help but remember her own image in the family portrait above the fireplace, the vision of her younger self with that silly, childish grin – a snapshot of the days before the conditioning had _really_ kicked in.

"You know what?" said Preston quietly. "I'm not even frightened anymore: there's no point any pretending that anything's ever going to change. We're dead. This family is _finished_. We got exactly what we wanted, and it's killed us all… and it all happened while I was at the helm. Do whatever you want to do to me. Just… just get it over with quickly."

There was a pause.

 _You hear that? You've got his permission. What more do you need? You've got to hurt him if you want to win this challenge, and you've got to win this challenge if you want to escape, and you've got to escape if you want to see Dipper again. Simple as that. Just give him a good old-fashioned hiding and leave it at that. No fuss, no mess, no mercy. Come on, it's not as if you care enough about him to regret hurting him. He's just a punching bag, nothing else._

But she'd seen and heard too much to reduce him to an object: she knew that, if she hadn't met Mabel and Dipper, she would have been just like Preston, coldly raising a child to carry on the family name and fortune without a trace of mercy. And in that moment, Pacifica saw, with perfect clarity, the next stage in Bill Cipher's game: another form of operant conditioning, rewarding bloodshed with power, using revenge to iron out any personal reservations about torture. A game of corruption, compromising every one of her hard-won principles one by one, until she thought, spoke and acted just like Bill.

And she knew what she had to do. It would hurt, of course, and it would probably send her straight back to square one, and it might even cost her the chance to escape, but…

 _I am not just another link in the world's worst chain._

Pacifica took a deep breath. "No," she said at last.

"What?"

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said simply. She looked skywards, where the Henchmaniacs were no doubt still watching. "You hear me? I'm not playing along anymore! You can punish me all you like, but I'm through with this sick contest! I'm not going to torture or kill anyone! Get your entertainment elsewhere, because this game is officially OVER!"

And with that, she _flung_ the swarm of torture devices at the wall as hard as she possibly could. She was immediately rewarded with a spectacular eruption of cacophonous sound as the wrecked devices clattered down the length of the wall into a colossal pile of junk, the dreaded buzzer shattering into useless electrical wreckage as it hit the ground.

But no Henchmaniacs appeared.

"COME ON!" Pacifica roared. "WE'RE DONE PLAYING! LET'S GET ON WITH IT! YOU MIGHT AS WELL STOP WATCHING AND GET A LIFE, BECAUSE I'M NOT INTERESTED IN BEING YOUR ENTERTAINMENT!"

The room remained stubbornly Henchmaniac-free.

"BILL, IF THIS IS ANOTHER ONE OF YOUR JOKES, I WILL BE VERY DISAPPOINTED."

If anything, the silence only deepened.

"Hello?"

Tentatively, Pacifica cast her mind across the mansion, searching for any sign of the Henchmaniacs or anything working on their behalf.

Nothing.

No Henchmaniacs.

No Bill.

No surveillance.

Whatever had drawn Bill's attention away from her game had proved so entertaining that Amorphous Shape and Kryptos had finally left the mansion unattended.

And they'd also left the throne unattended.

Which meant-

Pacifica's eyes lit up.

With a wave of her hand, she undid Preston's restraints, allowing him to totter out of the dentist's chair at long last. "What's going on?" he asked nervously.

"We're escaping!" Pacifica shouted, unable to hide the triumph in her voice. "Go release mother from her room and then get throne room as quickly as possible: I'm going to take as many barbs as I need to create portals of my own, and then we are officially on our way out of this hellhole!"

"But-"

"No buts! We are officially free from now on! The Northwests are no longer Bill's servants: from now on, WE ARE A FREE FAMILY! Now hurry: I don't know what's got Bill so preoccupied, but it's probably not going to last for very long. We've got a jailbreak to stage!"

* * *

A/N: Coming up next, a rich tale of cabin fever, paranoia and violence! Feel free to theorize just who could be next!

Or, if you prefer...

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	17. Faceless Fears And Cabin Fever

A/N: Aaaaaaaargh! I'm back! I'm barely conscious, but I'm back! Sorry for the delay, everyone: last month might just have been the busiest January I've ever endured - everything from holidays with transportation snafus to computers dying and being replaced. I thank you all for viewing, reviewing, favouriting and following and messaging, and I can only try to keep myself to a tighter schedule - because you, ladies and gentlemen, are worth it!

 **Northgalus2002:** Thanks for your well-wishes; I hope you enjoy this latest chapter... and I can confidently say that you were bang on the money with the first two guesses!

 **Kraven the Hunter:** Correct on the last guess! "Melted with a blowtorch" - I like that! And to answer your question, even as a doll, Pacifica still has a mind - enough to be measured by the supernatural equivalent of an EEG. You're right, I do pick weird days to post my morbid content. I suppose the Secret World's been a very unhealthy influence on me, but that's another story for another time. I hope you enjoy the chapter!

 **Guest:** Again, she doesn't have a heart or lungs, but she does have enough of a working brain to show up on an EEG. Yes, good things happen when Bill's distracted - but be warned, things are going to get worse before they get better. Oh, and you were bang on the money with your first guess... although that wasn't quite what a meant when I referred to sleep, but there you go. Meanwhile, yeah, Preston is pretty much broken, and it's going to be interesting to further his character in that vein. Anyway, I hope this chapter is worth the wait, and I look forward to reading your wonderful reviews!

 **FantasyFan223:** Well, Soos is out as well, don't forget. Also, here's another important thing: other than her role in the Zodiac, Bill had almost no dealings with Pacifica before Weirdmageddon went global, so he doesn't really understand her; even the punishment was enacted primarily upon the Northwests as a family rather than Pacifica as an individual. So, he acts to a more general theme, overlooking her crush on Dipper and banking on the instability at the heart of the family to encourage corruption. However, he didn't count on Pacifica learning the very un-Northwest-like virtues of mercy and empathy. As for what's up next... well, you were right about Dipper and Wendy. I'm so sorry, but the two are only going to suffer further for a bit! Thank you so much for your wonderful reviews, and I hope the chapter lives up to expectations.

 **:** Thank you so much for the review; I'm glad you like the story so far, and I hope the delay didn't give you any worries!

 **MysticFire348:** I'll do my best to keep you appraised of what's going on - of course, it's going to be tricky because Bill's games are indeed very timey-wimey: he's got so many parallel pocket dimensions going on at different time rates it might be impossible... but there will be a good indication of how long the overall time period has been. I'll include a PREVIOUSLY ON tagline for good measure, just to see what people think. Anyway, hope you enjoy the chapter, and I hope the wait hasn't been too arduous.

 **OMAC001:** Yes indeed; thanks for reviewing!

 **LoyalTheorist:** Just wait and see... (Maniacal Laughter)

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: feel free to furnish me with your comments, critiques, and criticisms - especially of the typoes that creep in at three in the morning. Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

 **PREVIOUSLY ON** ** _ALL THE WORLD'S A TOYBOX_** **: AFTER AN ENCOUNTER WITH NYARLATHOTEP AND THE FILTH AT FORT ACHERON, DIPPER AND WENDY WERE REUNITED, AND NOW BILL HAS A GAME FOR TWO PLAYERS.**

Disclaimer: _Gravity Falls_ is not mine, and neither are all the crossover elements. Or those song titles, obviously.

* * *

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* * *

Somewhere on the outer reaches of a landscape as alien as the surface of the moon and as unforgiving as the South Pole, deep within a stone burrow just large enough to offer shelter from the bitter elements beyond the cavern's jaws, two figures huddled around a paltry campfire.

Outside the cavern, rain poured down across the otherworldly clifftops, sending rivers of icy water gushing across the unnatural shapes of the peaks and mesas that dotted the horizon; lightning tore across the tarry black clouds, searing eyes, shattering rock and reducing the few paltry trees to ashes; and in the distance, the sonorous _thud_ of hailstones rang out across the mountain range as fist-sized chunks of ice hammered mercilessly against the stone, a blatant death threat to anyone brave or stupid enough to travel across open country in such weather. And yet, this was by far the most _normal_ weather the two wanderers had seen here since they'd first arrived here.

Within the cave, all was at peace – a brittle, barely-functional sort of peace, but peace nonetheless. By now, the two figures had realized that they weren't going anywhere in a hurry, and had come to terms with the fact as best as they could… in the sense that they hadn't come to terms with it at all. Creeping damp, sickness, harsh weather, dwindling supplies, roaming packs of hungry monsters and increasingly limited opportunities for safe hunting or foraging had taken its toll on the wanderers, and the prospect of being trapped for another week in this torturous mountain range was slowly driving away what little sanity remained to them.

Possessions and equipment were limited: between the two of them, they had one knife, a whetstone, a dog-eared journal that never seemed to run out pages, a pen, a pencil, a handful of bandages, a tube of antiseptic ointment, four blankets, a length of rope, a bundle of barely-suitable firewood from across the mountains, and two large buckets (one for collecting water, the other for waste disposal – and thankfully, nobody had gotten them mixed up yet).

Of the two residents, only one was still healthy enough to leave the cavern in fairer weather: she'd only just awoken from the haunted slumber she spent most of her free time languishing in, and was busy sharpening her knife in readiness for the next hunt. Every now and again, she'd look from her knife to the cave entrance with an expectant, almost desperate look in her bloodshot eyes; she and her companion hadn't eaten in two days and what little provisions they'd brought here had long since run dry, but unfortunately the weather outside made hunting practically suicidal – and her matted red hair was still dripping wet from her last attempt at venturing out into the deluge. For now, she could only sit tight and wait.

At present, her slender build was still fit and muscular enough to support her infrequent hunts, but nobody could mistake the early signs of starvation: her cheekbones and chin seemed to jut harshly from her face, the result of skin being drawn tight across bones as her body slowly exhausted its fuel reserves and began eating itself alive.

Her companion lay in a shivering heap on the opposite side of the campfire, too weak to rise from his makeshift bed. Already short and skinny at the best of times, starvation had left him a shrunken husk of a person almost lost amidst the blankets that shrouded him, and fever had taken what little of his strength remained. Unfortunately, nothing even vaguely medicinal could be found in the surrounding mountain range, and so there'd been little to do except keep him comfortable until the illness had passed; doubly unfortunately, this strategy hadn't been all that successful, and the lack of food didn't help. Whimpering, delirious and barely conscious, he could only lie there as the hours ticked by, beads of ice-cold sweat clustered across his pallid forehead, trembling hands reaching out for things that existed only in his fever-ravaged imagination…

…or for the dog-eared journal that still sat neglected by his bedside.

Occasionally, he would groan and suddenly change shape, his body shifting and warping into a new form beneath his tattered blankets. Over the course of the last few days, he'd been an elephant, a dolphin, a mouse, an inflatable beach ball, a flock of birds, a gnome, a capybara, a pack of tarot cards, a Manotaur, and a succession of familiar individuals from Gravity Falls – to name but a few. Sadly, most of these shapes were just as feverish and starved as his original, so they weren't much help to either of the two, but by now the transformations were accepted as a sign that he was still a good distance from death's door.

For now.

Outside, the rumble of thunder began to soften, and the nerve-grinding patter of rain on the rocks bordering the mouth of the cavern suddenly dwindled to a gentle drizzle. Slowly, the more upright of the two companions crept to the edge of the cave and peered out into the cold night air; by all appearances, the storm had finally died down. By now, she knew appearances could be deceiving… but she wasn't prepared to let an opportunity pass her by.

Creeping over to her sleeping friend's side, she shook him gently, and whispered "I'm going out for couple of hours, Dipper. This is the best chance I'll get to find food. I'll be back soon, I promise… and _don't follow me this time,_ okay?"

If Dipper had heard her, he gave no indication; he let out a pained moan, shifted wildly from human to opossum and back again, and then collapsed back into the pillows, whimpering incoherently. However, had anyone been listening closely to the stream of nonsensical babble, they might have perceived a few real words: _"Mabel… Mabel, I'm sorry, I… wait for me, Mabel… come back…"_

Wendy shook her head, gently tucking Dipper's blankets up to his chin; for a moment, she tried to think of something reassuring to say, something that might make them both feel better about the odds stacked against them. Of course, nothing sprung to mind: after all, Dipper was going to spend the next hour alone, deathly ill and too weak to run if something found the cave, and Wendy was going to spend it risking life and limb in search of food that might not even be there. So without a word, she made straight for the cavern entrance, scuttled out into the icy rain and across the slippery outcropping – headed straight for the only viable hunting ground left in the mountains.

Back in the cave, Dipper shivered as a fresh gust of cold wind rippled across him, bypassing the blankets and chilling him right to the bone. Briefly jarred free of his feverish sleep, his eyes fluttered as he gradually made the long, stumbling journey back to full consciousness: naturally, he didn't make it all the way, and Dipper was left barely awake enough to realize he was alone and in pain, but other than that, he was more awake than he'd been in days.

And in that very moment, Bill Cipher began to sing.

Bill's voice sounded from all angles at once, assaulting Dipper with a torturous caterwauling so atonal and mawkish that it wouldn't have even made it as far as the average reality TV show: this was more than just bad singing; this was sonic terrorism. From somewhere beyond reality, a band of Henchmaniacs accompanied him as loudly as possible, thundering away on eldritch musical instruments custom-designed to mangle any given tune to within an inch of its life, and occasionally providing backing vocals in voices that probably would have made Dipper's ears bleed if he wasn't so busy shapeshifting.

And the song of choice was _Just Walking In The Rain._

Dipper groaned and did his best to cover his ears. The last few nights, it had been all been about rain: _Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, Rainy Day, Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall,_ and inevitably, _Singin' In The Rain._ Song after song after godawful song about rain resounding across the clifftops and echoing about the caves loudly enough to burst Dipper's eardrums, and if this particular act of musical torture was anything like the last seven, Wendy could probably hear it just as easily as Dipper could.

 _Oh well,_ he thought. _At least it's not "Rain, Rain, Go Away" again._

His stomach lurched unpleasantly as the fever slowly reasserted itself, and he barely had enough time to lean out of his makeshift bed before throwing up. For a moment, he could only kneel there, coughing weakly as he shifted wildly from human to kitten to walrus to human again. Then, as Bill's torturous song echoed onwards, Dipper sank backwards into his pillows and lapsed swiftly into unconsciousness – and all the nightmares that came with it.

* * *

How had they found themselves here, in this pothole in the fabric of reality?

And what had happened to that lucky streak that had suddenly appeared at Fort Acheron?

For a little while at least, everything had been going _so well_ : Dipper had enjoyed a quality meal for the first time in weeks, he'd earned a brief respite from all the shapeshifting, Mr Carter had given him just a little time out of Bill Cipher's all-seeing eye, and he'd learned that someone – this mysterious Mr A – was helping him from behind the scenes. He'd even run into Wendy! After weeks on end spent travelling alone, he was teamed up with Wendy again. What could possibly spoil that luck?

Well, Bill hadn't been happy.

He _really_ hadn't taken kindly to Dipper's sudden disappearing act: whatever Mr Carter had done to hide him, it had obviously been a serious annoyance to the psychopathic corn chip, even if it hadn't lasted for much longer than half an hour or so. And if there was anything Dipper had learned anything in the last couple of days, Bill Cipher _really_ didn't like to be annoyed.

As soon as Dipper had "reappeared," Bill threw a temper-tantrum, demanding to know where he'd gone to and what he'd been doing in that time. Naturally, he'd done his best to get Dipper to talk, from nearly drowning him under a small tsunami of mud, to the good old-fashioned ten thousand volts to the bare feet. But to Dipper's surprise, he'd somehow managed to keep silent; in fact, the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Mr Carter had _done_ something that kept Dipper from revealing what had happened. Certainly, every time he came close to caving in, he found himself thinking of that _thing_ Carter had transformed into, and any thoughts of surrender abruptly blanked out in sheer terror.

Whatever the case, Bill had eventually gotten bored and decided that whatever had happened, Dipper hadn't been in on it. So, he continued playing, this time with his two playthings united as a team. Unfortunately, he was still grouchy over the disappearance. As such, he took immediate revenge on the two of them by summoning a rainstorm and having it pour down on them for the next seventeen hours. With nothing but barren plains for the next few miles, the rain in itself would have been bad enough, but Bill had felt the need to add live leeches to the mix.

After that, he'd amped up the weather, slowly herding them down the path and out of reality. If he'd noticed what was going on at Fort Acheron, he either didn't notice or just didn't care; perhaps he was too busy trying to figure out how Dipper had evaded his sight, maybe he was having too much fun setting up the next stage of the torture. Whatever the case, he just sheep-dogged them along to the next pocket dimension and, from the looks of things, forgot all about the world before.

For seven and a half days, Dipper and Wendy had been chased across a seemingly endless stretch of Bill's hellish playground, from the monumental ruins of human cities laid waste by the Henchmaniacs to nightmare landscapes that could never have existed in reality. And along the way, they'd been hounded by all the horrors the crazy nacho could throw at them: giant spiders mounted on locust wings was a popular option, along with fast-moving acidic gel moulds, skyscraper-sized hybrids of human being and coffee shop, armies of carnivorous bowling pins herding sentient bowling balls the size of semitrailers, ambulatory tombstones, lakes of liquid cacti that moved to swamp them with waves of deadly spines as they tried to cross, piranha-ladybird swarms deeper than snowdrifts, parasitic golf tees infesting the bodies of helpless Liliputtians, zombie werewolves (or possibly werewolf zombies, Dipper still couldn't be sure), and demented lightning-people that dropped from the clouds stinking of ozone to electrocute passers-by with their crackling, tendril-like fingers.

Naturally, Wendy had fared the best on this mad journey: from what little she'd been able to tell Dipper between ambushes, she'd been up against the worst of the wasteland for weeks and knew the ropes by now, particularly when it came to finding food and unlikely sleeping places. Best of all, she seemed to instinctively recognize when it was best to fight their attackers and when it was better to just keep running – and just as well, because Bill preferred to keep the odds firmly stacked against them over the course of that hellish week. In every single encounter, Wendy took charge, either grabbing Dipper by the hand and sprinting over the horizon like a steroidal gazelle, or drawing a knife and launching herself at the nearest monster with a berserker roar.

As for Dipper himself… well, if anything, Dipper was _less_ than useless that week.

In a way, it wasn't all that surprising: after all, he was still uncontrollably shapeshifting, and most of the forms he took were unsuited to combat at best – and on the rare occasions when they were halfway useful, he was already shifting on to the next form before he could even get within clawing distance of the enemy. More often than not, Dipper spent these battles wobbling impotently around on the sidelines, shifting wildly between bedside table, blobfish, and a pile of leaves while Wendy took on the entire pack of monsters by herself. Of course, Dipper knew full well that Wendy was a thousand times faster and stronger than he'd ever be, but it was hard not to feel like an idiot, watching her darting around the enemy with all the speed and agility her years of training had granted her while he himself could only sit there like a beached whale.

But as embarrassing as battles like these were, it could always get worse: far more emasculating were the moments where Dipper's shapeshifting left him in a form that wasn't merely useless, but pathetic. More than one frantic dash across the silver glaciers was delayed by a sudden transformation into a mouse, and thanks to the mirrored walls surrounding him, Dipper knew all too well just how ridiculous he looked as his ears expanded, his nose jutted outwards and his body shrank down into his increasingly baggy clothes. At times like these, Wendy had no option but to pick Dipper up and hastily stuff him into one of her pockets, resulting in further embarrassments when he finally changed back.

In the end, it was just as well that – no matter how far away he left them or how badly they were damaged – Dipper's clothes always somehow grew back once he returned to human form, otherwise the situation might have been even more mortifying.

Eventually, Bill had herded the two of them into a realm of gargantuan mountains and horizon-spanning plateaus, broken only by valleys of razor-sharp rocks and sickly-grey lakes. Bit by bit, he'd sheepdogged Dipper and Wendy through the mountain passes, across the yawning chasms, and sometimes even to the very summits of the mountains, until finally they found the cave.

For a time, they'd holed up there, believing they were being set up for some kind of last stand; but when the inevitable death squad of monsters hadn't shown up, they'd decided to stay there and recover from the last few days of panic. Wendy hunted for food, Dipper foraged for edible lichens and fungi, and they both patched up the many cuts and bruises they'd acquired along the way. They were always busy, but never exhaustingly so: in fact, they did so well over the first couple of days that Dipper was actually able to complete an entire chapter of his journal.

Eventually, they recovered enough to decide their next course of action. The plan – or the ersatz bargain-basement substitute for one they'd stitched together at short notice – was to gather as many supplies before making their next move. They hadn't been able to detail much of this particular strategy, given that Bill was still listening, but through slang, innuendo and outright code, they'd decided that once they were ready to move on, they would try to find the rest of the Zodiac as Bill had challenged Dipper to do and form the Wheel again.

"Somehow, I don't think it's gonna be as simple as that, dude," Wendy had muttered disconsolately.

In spite of himself, Dipper had offered a reassuring smile – one only slightly spoiled by the fact that he was busily transforming into a hippo at the time. "I found you, didn't I?" he said. "That's a start. Who knows? Maybe we'll find Mabel next."

Of course, he didn't really believe a word of this overly-hopeful spin. After all, he didn't know if Mr A and Mr Carter were ever going to contact him again, how they could help him, or even if they were real. In the end, as much as he missed Mabel, Soos, Grunkle Stan, Pacifica and Grunkle Ford, he was just glad he wasn't alone anymore.

 _At least we have each other,_ he'd thought.

And that was where it had all gone horribly wrong. To be fair, "horribly wrong" was more or less the default state of the entire planet, so if anything, this qualified as merely "worse than usual." First came the famine: three days into their mountaintop exile, the best game suddenly scurried off to more remote areas, forcing Wendy to travel for days in search of decent prey. Even the fungi didn't seem interested in sticking around. In the end, they were forced to make do with what they could catch within an hour's walk – most of which consisted of bugs, rats, or if they were really lucky, one of the giant tapeworms that haunted the upper valleys. For a while, Dipper had been around to lend a hand on the daily hunt, if only to help gather up the bodies. But then the weather took a turn for the vicious, and suddenly their plans for leaving the mountains had gone straight out the window, taking any future hunting expeditions with them.

From then on, Wendy had insisted on hunting alone. Hunting outdoors in the increasingly unpredictable weather was simply too dangerous for anyone but her – or so she argued. Dipper had tried to convince her that he could still help out, but less than three minutes outside on the slippery cliffs had proved him immediately wrong.

"You see?" Wendy had grumbled, as she'd hauled Dipper away from the edge of the crevasse. "I can't look after you out there, Dipper: I need to concentrate on hunting and surviving, and with you transforming all the time…" She'd sighed deeply. "I'm sorry, dude, but I've got to handle this myself. It's the only way we can scrape up dinner and both stay alive."

"Well, maybe when the weather clears up-"

"It _won't_ clear up, Dipper! This is Bill's world, remember? It'll storm as long as he feels like it, and the famine will last as long as he wants! He'll make sure everything stays as crappy as possible, and it'll never let up as long as we're still alive. If you go hunting with me, you'll only get hurt, killed or worse, because that's exactly the way Bill would want it – and because I can't keep an eye on you all the time. I need a hunting partner who can fend for himself, and I don't want you getting hurt!"

Wendy had taken a deep breath, and in that moment, Dipper had found himself asking, "What do you mean 'worse?' I mean, I can think of a few things, but how do you know-"

" _That's none of your damn business!"_ Wendy roared.

For the next minute and a half, there'd been silence in the cave, as she struggled to regain her composure. Eventually, she managed to calm down just enough to continue: "It's Bill's world, Dipper. Never forget that: staying alive is the best we can do out here."

Needless to say, it hadn't taken Dipper long to realize that Wendy had changed a lot since he'd last seen her back in the Fearamid, and it was a little bit perplexing given how little things had changed since then. Back in the early days of Weirdmageddon, she'd eked out a hard living for herself in the ruins of Gravity Falls with only her hatchet and crossbow to rely on, and she'd still been the same laid-back, effortlessly confident girl that Dipper had fallen for – setting traps, killing bats, dodging monsters and giving Dipper the encouragement he needed to carry on.

These days, though, Wendy wasn't so laid-back anymore, and she didn't seem all that confident either: the calm smile, the easy banter, the adventurousness, the optimism… it had all vanished. Gone was the girl who'd casually thrown Dipper the keys to the golf cart and told him not to hit any pedestrians; in her place was a twitchy, hollow-eyed woman who slept with a knife under her pillow and spent most of her days glancing over one shoulder, unable to trust Dipper with anything beyond staying put. Bill's game had clearly changed her, but it was impossible to guess what he'd done to her in the days before they'd met again, and Wendy herself flew into a rage if Dipper even _tried_ to ask about it.

Whatever had happened, nothing could change Wendy's mind: every evening, if the weather allowed it, she went hunting and Dipper was left behind to write journal entries, tend the fire, and let the next wave of transformations swamp him.

And since Dipper was officially grounded in the cave, Bill once again took complete control of his transformations.

The forms were nastier now: if Dipper became an animal, he'd be lucky if he could get away with being a cockroach. If he became an object, he was a living blob of taffy stretched between the walls of the cave, or a stone on the cave floor – blind, deaf and immobile, buried alive inside himself and waiting for Bill to return him to normal.

In the end, was it any surprise that Bill had eventually made Dipper sick?

Was it really such a shock that he'd had remade the shapeshifting into a crippling fever? After all, he wouldn't want to give Dipper a power that would actually be _useful_ , not when there was so much more suffering to squeeze out of him.

And then, just when he was starting to think that things couldn't possibly get any worse, the music had started: jazz, swing, classic rock-and-roll, even modern songs by Sev'ral Timez. And frankly, it wasn't even the style of the music that bothered him so much as the fact that Bill was determined to make every single tune as loud and obnoxious as possible. Plus, he had a frustrating tendency to pick songs appropriate to the situation – or _in_ appropriate as the case may be.

Frankly, Dipper could have done without all the crappy love songs that started up every time he tried to start a friendly conversation with Wendy.

Back in the present, Dipper turned over in his not-quite-sleep, stomach churning and mind bubbling deliriously as he tried to think of what to do next. So far, nothing came to mind. After all, what could he do?

So he simply lay still and let the transformations continue as he slowly lapsed back into true unconsciousness.

But no transformations came.

 _Wow, I've been in this form a long time,_ he thought dimly, as the world went blank. _I wonder if that means something or… if I'm just… dreaming…_

* * *

Scant miles away from the cave, Wendy had officially exhausted her hard-won reserves of cool, and was ready to start cursing at the top of her voice.

So far, she'd had no luck in finding food: the rodents had long since retreated to various underground burrows, and the endless rain had finally driven away the giant maggots and leeches that frequented the pools of still water. As for the traps she'd set up on her last visit, almost every single one was either empty or destroyed; the one exception had been left alone too long, and the wild rabbit it had ensnared was by now too decomposed to be even remotely edible.

Shame, too. After over a month of living off rats and bugs, a plump, juicy rabbit would have been a welcome change. Granted, it would have been better with ketchup and mustard. Maybe a sesame seed bun. Some fries on the side wouldn't hurt, either. Ice cream for dessert might actually make the madness of the last few weeks worthwhile. Of course, in the meantime Wendy still had to live in reality, and she had to find food for her and Dipper before the weather got any worse, or else they'd starve.

In the meantime, she still had to deal with the predators that occasionally spilled forth from Bill's nightmare world to roam the mountaintops in search of prey. They didn't appear often, but there was no way of predicting where and when they'd show up, and the tamer ones usually did so armoured with impenetrable carapaces and bristling with venom-dripping spines. For good measure, they were completely inedible – as Wendy herself had found out the hard way after thirteen straight hours of convulsions and vomiting.

And of course, Bill was only making a relatively simple hunt a thousand times more difficult through all the goddamn singing.

 _I swear,_ she thought, _if I have to listen to another five minutes of_ Wives And Lovers _on my way back to the cave, I will find a way to make that hovering corn chip eat his own eyeball, even if it means carving a new mouth for the sadistic bastard._

Sighing, Wendy paused under a narrow ledge of rock and absently wrung a small ocean of grimy water out of her hair. Not for the first time, she wished she still had her hat – or anything that might have kept the rain off her, really – but the lumberjack's deerstalker had gone the way of disco and dodos. So, for the time being, a flannel headband was the best she could hope for.

And then she saw it.

Just across from her, sheltered by a shallow cavity in the rock wall, was the gory remains of a dead deer. Given the mess, it was hard to say what had killed it, but judging by the long-dried blood trail, it probably wasn't natural causes. Local predators had taken several bites out of the animal's belly before Bill's monsters had forced them to move on, and a few stubborn carrion birds were busy pecking at its exposed innards. And to Wendy's sheer relief, the body was still edible; true, this mangled carcass probably wouldn't taste spectacular, and it wouldn't provide nearly as much meat as a whole deer… but it was still fit to eat.

Wendy took a deep breath, and realized with a fresh surge of embarrassment that she'd been drooling for the last few seconds.

Wiping her mouth clean, she all but flung herself at the corpse, waving away the carrion birds with her arms; pausing only to hastily trim the least-suitable bits from the deer's exposed entrails, she slung the carcass over her shoulder and set off on a brisk march for the road back to the cave.

And then, just as she was starting to feel almost optimistic for the first time in months, a distant voice called out, "Wendy?"

Wendy froze. The voice was muffled by the rain and warped by distance, but there was no mistaking the familiar, boisterous tone.

"Oh Wendy?" Dad called. "Where are you? Come on out! It's the perfect time for a hunt and your brothers are all here for a night of family fun!"

He laughed, Manly Dan Corduroy's distinctive, booming laughter echoing wildly across the cliffs and mesa, even the rest of the Corduroy kids joined in with shrieking cackles and blood-curdling guffaws of their own.

 _Trap,_ Wendy thought. _It was a trap, and I fell for it. They taught me that at survival camp, Dad. They always told me a hungry animal's easier to catch…_

"Why so shy, Wendy?" the thunderous bellow resounded. "We've brought an old friend of yours along!"

And as if by magic, an all-too-familiar figure began scuttling across the mountainside on the other side of the gorge just across from her previous sheltering spot. Clearly visible through the rock formations that she'd been leaning against scant moments ago, a ghastly white body mounted on four arachnid legs crept back and forth, scanning the area for prey; even from here, she could clearly recognize the misshapen form, the pallid grublike skin, the blob of flesh and muscle where the left arm should have been, the withered skeletal right arm, the insectoid mouthparts, and the bulbous crimson eyes.

The Shapeshifter was back.

Somehow, it had escaped the cryotube and the bunker, and now it was back for – what? Revenge? Food? Or was the damn thing just working for Bill now?

 _Just when you think the day can't get any worse…_

Wendy took one last look at the distant figure of the Shapeshifting, just to make sure it hadn't seen her yet. Then, gripping the dear carcass as tightly as she could, she put her head down and ran for her life. But even as she ran, she could already hear that deep, alien voice echoing after her.

" _Run all you like!"_ the Shapeshifter cackled. _"I'll find you sooner or later – and I guarantee you'll never know what hit you! And Dipper? Oh, I keep my promises, girl! He'll die_ _ **screaming!**_ _"_

* * *

It took far longer than necessary to get back to the cave: the downpour made the pathway across the cliffs almost too slippery to cross without risking a fatal fall, and the weight of the deer on her back on made her slower still; every now and again, she had to stop to check the area for any signs that the Shapeshifter or the possessed Corduroys were in pursuit, then erase any tracks she might have left for good measure.

But at long last, the cave entrance loomed ahead, the campfire within a beacon to Wendy's eyes. Staggering inside, she set down the deer, undressed as much as modesty would allow, and wrapped herself up in a blanket. Just to cut down on the chances of hypothermia, she sat by the fire for a moment, stoking the flames and adding a log or two where necessary – until at last she was ready for the unwholesome business of skinning, gutting and cooking a semi-decomposed lump of venison.

But before she set to work on making dinner, she crept over to where Dipper lay sleeping, just to make sure he was alive and well. From what little she could see of him as she approached, he was still breathing, but he still had the fever to contend with. Hopefully, he'd be well enough to eat something, but-

Wendy let out a strangled gasp.

As expected, Dipper had transformed again. This time, however, he'd taken the form of someone very specific.

This time, it was her youngest brother who lay sleeping on the cavern floor.

Angus Corduroy. Little Gus, short, wiry and perpetually undercut at the barbers', a hyperkinetic ball of energy with an insatiable enthusiasm for all things Corduroy and no patience to speak of; if Marcus had inherited Dad's bull-in-a-china-shop tendencies and Kevin had gotten his temper, Gus had wound up with Dad's excitability. God only knew it had made him the single loudest thing in the Corduroy home next to Dad himself, not to mention the most irritating; ever since Gus had learned to walk, he'd spent so much of the time running back and forth across the house that he just about qualified as a permanent tripping hazard by now – if not a localized cyclone on legs. He'd been the one that had put the finishing touches on Wendy's hard-won sense of cool; after all, even Mabel would have been worn out by Gus's hyperactive fits.

Except Gus wasn't all that hyperactive anymore. Lying there, pale and withered from starvation, his forehead beaded with sweat and his scrawny body curled into a foetal ball of pain, he looked so close to death that it took all of Wendy's willpower not to panic. The fever had him in its jaws now, and the teeth were sinking deeper every moment. He was even whimpering in his sleep, calling out "Wendy," over and over again – almost like a mantra.

For the briefest of moments, Wendy wanted to hug him. She wanted to tell him she was sorry for all the arguments she'd had with him, sorry for yelling at him, sorry for always being annoyed with him, sorry for every little misunderstanding and petty disagreement they'd shared.

But then reality came flooding back, and she remembered.

Gus wasn't really here. The _real_ Gus was out in the wilderness with the rest of the Corduroys, playing host to a swarm of parasitic worms and slowly hunting Wendy down; the _real_ Gus wanted her dead. And in his current state, Gus was as good as dead: there was no way to get those worms out, not without killing him, and with the world firmly under Bill's control, no doctor would ever be able to cure Gus or anyone else in the family.

The figure lying at her feet wasn't her brother at all.

It was Dipper, shapeshifting again – just another form out of thousands he'd taken.

And in that moment, Wendy hated Dipper more than anyone she'd ever known in her entire life.

At once, she knew that this didn't make any sense: Dipper couldn't control his shapeshifting any more than Wendy could control the weather, and even if he _could_ somehow learn to control his transformations, he certainly couldn't do it _now_ – not while he was feverish and bedridden. No, Dipper was blameless in all this. She knew that perfectly well; yes, she'd lost her temper with him once or twice in the last few days, but that was only because she'd needed so desperately to keep him from endangering his life. And besides, he was her friend – probably the only friend she had left.

Why would she ever have a reason to hate him?

Unfortunately, Wendy's paranoia chose that moment to start whispering. _And how do you know he's_ really _your friend? How do you know he's the real Dipper? For all you know, Shapeshifters hunt in pairs and this one's just waiting for the moment to rip your throat out._

Shut up, Wendy told herself. If he wanted me dead, he'd have killed me in my sleep by now. He's Dipper Pines, one of the few things that made this long summer worthwhile. He's my friend.

 _But what makes you think you're even friends anymore? What makes you think he's the same Dipper? You've seen how much people can change out in the wilderness. Remember the Auto Warriors who tried to rob you? All those refugees who turned on you the moment they realized the monsters were targeting you? More to the point, you've seen the things that Bill can do to people's minds: what if there's a swarm of worms in_ his _brain as well? What if his time out in the wasteland's_ changed _him? What if the fever's an act? What if he's doing this just to mess with your head?_

 _What makes you think you can trust_ anyone _out here?_

Wendy couldn't answer any of those questions. All she could think of was her family, and how deeply she missed them… and that terrible, ice-cold stab of hatred in the back of her mind. Far away, Bill's musicians played a mocking refrain of _I'm Making Believe_ , but Wendy couldn't hear a word of it: right then and there, she was deaf to everything but the whisper of her own paranoia.

Slowly, she crept to the edge of the cave, where the roar of the rain drowned out all but the loudest of noises, and sat with her back to the campfire.

She didn't want to see Gus's face vanish, as she knew it would sooner or later.

She didn't want Dipper to hear her crying.

It took three hours for Dipper to return to his true form, and by then, Wendy was certain that something was very wrong with her "friend."

* * *

Days went by, and Dipper's fever gradually dwindled.

Bit by bit, the lucid periods grew longer, the delirious spells shortened dramatically, and after a week, Dipper was finally able to get out of bed without puking. What with the limited food, his strength was slow to return, and often disrupted by random shapeshifts, but eventually he was able to walk unassisted.

Of course, Wendy still wouldn't let him leave the cave, but for once, Dipper wasn't complaining.

For he'd noticed something new about his condition. In the last three days, he'd been grounded and effectively motionless, so he should have been transforming uncontrollably every second of the day… and yet, he wasn't. Oh, sure, he was still _shapeshifting,_ and every now and again his body would take a new form at random – a dog, a crow, an aardvark, a mahogany writing desk – but it didn't happen as often or as violently.

The one morning, he awoke to find his skin patterned with leopard spots and his hair replaced with a mane of black feathers. But it wasn't until he wished that he could be rid of them – and saw the patterns and plumage vanishing from his skin – that he realized that Bill Cipher was no longer completely in control of the transformations.

He didn't know how this could have happened: maybe the fever had changed the nature of Bill's curse, or perhaps it was all the weird magical phenomena had changed him after weeks of exposure. Whatever the case, the power was in Dipper's hands.

Slowly, Dipper was learning how to shapeshift – _of his own free will._

* * *

At first, he could only rewind the transformations foisted upon him. Then, with an effort of will, he could gradually encourage parts of his body to change of their own accord, giving him cat paws in place of hands, for example. He wasn't quite able to change his entire body, but he was making progress – slowly but surely, he was making progress.

Unfortunately, his one attempt to demonstrate this in front of Wendy ended with a random transformation that he was too slow and too clumsy to rewind before it was too late.

As a result, Dipper found himself transforming into _Wendy._

Worse still, the transformation immediately ruined his clothes, leaving his new form a little bit more exposed than anyone would have preferred. As if to add insult to mutual humiliation, Bill started singing again, this time croaking out _Lovemaker, Lovebreaker_ until Dipper was able to change back.

In any case, Wendy did not take this particular development well: if she'd been short with him beforehand, now she barely seemed interested in sharping the same space with him for any length of time. She never said a harsh word to him, though, not unless provoked by some thoughtless remark or offensive topic of conversation… but she was angry with him; Dipper could tell by the way she dug her nails into her palms whenever they spoke.

True, some days were better than others: on good days, she might be friendly enough to exchange a few words, maybe even plan out the next step in their journey, but never actually discuss anything that wasn't strictly business; on bad days, she was barely capable of looking at him without a look of deepest suspicion forming on her face.

And the sad thing was, this newfound animosity didn't seem to be due to the embarrassment factor, or the fact that Dipper hadn't been doing a very good job at not taking in his new body while he still had it. If anything, the simple fact that he could control his shapeshifting at all seemed to aggravate Wendy beyond all reason, and the fact that he was getting better at it seemed to kick her growing distrust into overdrive. More than once, Dipper had caught her peering frantically through the mouth of the cave, as if she was looking for something out on the neighbouring mountain range – and then looking back at _him_ , as if _he_ was the threat she should be worrying about.

In any case, she seemed determined to spend as much time out in the hunting grounds as possible, so Dipper was left alone to study his growing powers in the privacy of the cave… and of course, contribute to his increasingly lengthy journal.

One afternoon, however, Dipper was busy jotting down the newest developments in his transformations, marvelling at the fact that he could create dozens of entries and still never run out of pages, when the almost-placid atmosphere of the cavern shifted. Then, without warning, the ink on Dipper's pen began to run and ooze horizontally across the paper, slowly forming letters entirely of its own accord, until a sentence had taken shape at the top of the page.

HAVING FUN, PINE TREE? It said.

"Bill?" Dipper whispered.

WHO ELSE COULD IT BE?

"But what… why are you talking to me like this?"

BECAUSE YOU MISSED ME. YOU MISSED HAVING A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED CHAT WITH YOUR LORD AND MASTER.

"Go to hell."

IT HURTS, DOESN'T IT? said the text. THE FACT THAT WENDY DOESN'T LOVE YOU. ALL THAT DEVOTION YOU SHOW TO HER AND SHE ONLY THINKS OF YOU AS A FRIEND. I COULD CHANGE THAT, OF COURSE.

Dipper's eyes shifted in the direction of the corner where Wendy still lay sleeping, and his fingers instinctively tightened around the spine of the book. "Leave me alone," he whispered.

AW, IT'S JUST SO CUTE WATCHING YOU PRETEND NOT TO BE HEARTBROKEN. I CAN MAKE HER CARE. I CAN MAKE YOU THE RIGHT AGE FOR HER… AND MAKE HER MIND PERFECT FOR YOU.

SHE'LL NEVER SAY NO TO YOU EVER AGAIN.

Dipper very nearly threw up. Even if he hadn't been screwed over by deals like these before, everything Bill had just communicated was nothing short of _wrong_. What would Bill do to her if Dipper said yes? Brainwash her? Replace her brain altogether – or worse? Everything about the idea conjured up something uglier in Dipper's imagination. No, he couldn't even think of agreements like this. Wendy had said she was happier just being friends with him, and if she was happy with it, _he_ was happy with it.

ARE YOU STILL CONTENTING YOURSELF WITH ALL THAT "AT LEAST WE'RE STILL FRIENDS" CRAP? The text continued. RED DOESN'T EVEN LIKE YOU ANYMORE, KIDDO: ALL THE THINGS THAT KEPT HER FROM BEING ANNOYED WITH YOU ARE GONE. SHE HATES YOU THESE DAYS.

"That's not true!"

EVERYTIME SHE LOOKS AT YOU, SHE HAS TO SWALLOW ANOTHER MOUTHFUL OF BILE. YOU'VE HELD HER BACK, YOU'VE DISOBEYED HER ORDERS, YOU'VE BROUGHT FEAR INTO HER LIFE, YOU'VE RUBBED ALL HER LOSSES IN HER FACE, AND YOU'VE HUMILIATED HER. ALL LITTLE THINGS, BUT THEY ADD UP TO BIG ONES OVER TIME, AND YOU JUST KEEP BEING HATEFUL WITHOUT EVEN MEANING TO.

"Shut up!" Dipper almost screamed – but his heart wasn't in it, not really: somewhere in the back of his mind, a poisonous little voice was insisting that Bill was absolutely right, that Wendy really _did_ hate him for all the stupid mistakes he'd made in the last week. And though Dipper tried to resist the idea, to remind himself that Wendy hadn't been herself since the start of Bill's latest game and that maybe she'd be better once they'd found time to recover, the runaway train of thought was almost impossible to stop.

BESIDES, SHE'S A SURVIVOR, PINE TREE; SHE CAN'T STAND BEING TIED DOWN TO SOMEONE SO HELPLESS.

"I'm _not_ helpless," Dipper snarled, temper flaring violently. "I'm getting stronger. Every day, I'm a little better at shapeshifting. Soon, I'll be able to get us out of these mountains, and then we're going to track down the rest of the Zodiac – just like you wanted – and then it'll be _your_ turn to lose everything!"

YOU MIGHT BE BETTER AT SHAPESHIFTING, KIDDO, BUT YOU'RE NOT IN COMPLETE CONTROL.

"…what are you talking about?"

CHECK YOUR HANDS.

Dipper very slowly looked down at his hands, the book abruptly tumbling out of his grasp; at first, he didn't know what he was supposed to be looking for, but as his fingers crept out of the shadows, he noticed with a thrill of shock that the fingernails on the last two fingers of his left hand had vanished. There was no wound, no blood, nothing to indicate the nails had been pulled out or anything like that; they'd simply disappeared, leaving only a featureless pink expanse of something not _quite_ like skin covering his fingertips, porcelain-smooth and entirely without texture.

Even the fingerprints were gone.

Suddenly nervous, Dipper called upon all the power of transformation he could muster so far, and did his best to will his fingers back into shape, to no avail. His ring and pinkie fingers remained completely nail-less. No matter how many ways he transformed himself, the fingernails remained missing whenever he returned to human form.

OH COME ON, Bill continued. I WARNED YOU, PINE TREE: I TOLD EVEN I WASN'T SURE HOW YOU'D CHANGE IN THE LONG RUN. EVERYTHING HAS SIDE-EFFECTS, AFTER ALL: YOU SEE, YOUR DEFAULT BODY'S CHANGING TOO – _**PERMANENTLY.**_

"W… what?"

YOU MIGHT FIND THE REST OF THE ZODIAC… BUT DO YOU THINK THEY'LL RECOGNIZE YOU? I MEAN, YOU PROBABLY WON'T EVEN HAVE A FACE BY THEN! THEY'LL THINK THEY'RE BEING RESCUED BY A RUNAWAY MANNEQUIN!

This time, Dipper couldn't even think of a response. All he could think of was the sight of his own face, rendered completely featureless by the dreadful side-effects of the shapeshifting – blind, deaf and mute.

BEST KEEP TAKING NOTES, PINE TREE. SOON, IT MIGHT JUST BE THE ONLY REMINDER OF WHAT YOU USED TO LOOK LIKE. BYE BYE FOR NOW! And with that, the ink on the page simply bled away, leaving the book completely cleansed of Bill's graffiti.

For what felt like centuries, Dipper could only stare at the now-blank page, heart hammering against his ribcage, mind racing faster than ever before. How long did he have before this new side-effect completely overtook him? How long had it been going on for? What would it mean for him? How would he eat or drink – or could he only do that while shapeshifted now? And what would Wendy think? Would he have time to explain himself to her, or would he just wake up one morning without a face?

What about Mabel? Would he ever see her again with human eyes?

Somewhere in the distance, Bill started singing again, this time warbling a nauseatingly saccharine rendition of _It's All Over But The Crying._

And in that moment, Dipper wanted to throw his journal into the campfire. He wanted to watch the pages burn, see all the meticulously-written paragraphs ooze and run together as the heat swept over them, and hear the crackle and _whoosh_ of all his hard work going up in smoke. He wanted to look up at the sky and scream, "You see that? I'm not playing any of your games anymore! You can do whatever you like to me, but _I'm! Not! Playing! Along!"_

But of course, he didn't: he was too busy thinking of the day when this new mutation would be complete, the day when his mouth sealed shut and his eyes sank beneath his flesh, the day when his face vanished forever.

So instead, he put pen to paper and went straight back to work – except this time he was working on a different entry entirely: Dipper Pines, complete with exacting descriptions of his appearance, and the best sketches he could manage with his increasingly splintered pencil.

Dipper's panic must have been plain to see to anyone in range, because when Wendy finally returned from the unsuccessful hunt a few hours later, she glanced in his direction with a look of mingled suspicion and concern on her face. "What's up?" she asked.

"Fine," Dipper squeaked.

Not too far away, Bill changed tune and began crooning out _It's A Sin To Tell A Lie._

* * *

Somewhere in a tiny overlooked pocket of reality amidst the chaos of Bill's ever-expanding empire, two unearthly figures stood atop an orbiting asteroid and looked down at the scene unfolding amidst the mountains. For what would have seemed like centuries to human observers, the duo simply watched, neither of them exchanging a single word – but for different reasons: the first of the two beings was simply too worried to speak; the second was too busy trying to hide his amusement at the growing torment.

Eventually, the man who called himself Mr Carter – as well as Nyarlathotep, the Black Pharaoh, the Crawling Chaos and a thousand other names to suit his many different faces – cleared his throat. "How long do you suppose it's been?" he asked.

Mr A, the Axolotl, looked up from his reverie, unable to keep the startled look off his host's face – but then, Tyler Cutebiker had never been the most stoic man on the planet, so the expression hardly looked out of place. "Since Weirdmageddon went global?"

"Hmmm."

"Approximately five months. Dipper and Wendy's dimension has the nearest thing to realtime anyone's going to experience here. Depending on Bill's sense of humour, some of the others have endured longer sentences, or shorter ones as the case may be. Not that you'd know, given how Bill's been keeping them from aging."

"And what do you suppose Bill's got planned for the two lovebirds? What game do you think would take up so much of his attention that he'd overlook all others?"

Axolotl sighed deeply. "Whatever it is, it can't be good. Normally, I'd have said he's out to make Dipper and Wendy kill each other; I mean the signs are all there: he's kept the music playing long enough to start wearing away at their sanity, he's got Dipper terrified that he's going to lose himself to these new symptoms, and he's doing his best to use Wendy's grief and trauma against her. Whether he can make her consciously hate Dipper for long isn't certain, but Bill can definitely make her distrust him. In any event, he's readied the combustibles; all he needs now is a spark to set the powderkeg alight."

"Don't forget he's got the parasitized Corduroys and the Shapeshifter out in the wilderness keeping the pressure on Wendy, as well," Nyarlathotep added helpfully.

"That's another thing. Something about the Shapeshifter doesn't quite add up: I can't use all my interdimensional senses in this current state of being, but I can't help but feel something's off about that Shapeshifter… and I just can't work out what it is."

"And you think that because of that… "Off" factor, Bill isn't just going to make them kill each other."

"That's one reason, yes. There's something greater to this, something more… corrupting, and yet sustaining. It's hard to tell: I've sent out a few extensions of my being, but they haven't turned up anything yet. All I know is that we need to get Dipper and Wendy out of there before it gets any worse." He paused. "Would it be too much to ask if you could veil them from Bill's sight again?"

Mr Carter/Nyarlathotep smirked. "Only if you pay my price… and only if I find the results amusing. You've already got one outstanding debt on the table, Mr A. Do you really want to make it double?"

"Forget it. Sometimes I wonder why you even bother exacting favours from me if you just warn me against further…"

Axolotl's words abruptly trailed off as the fabric of the world around them suddenly _rippled_. To outside observers, nothing about the impossible world below them had changed at all… but to more otherworldly eyes, the damage was already becoming obvious. On instinct, the Axolotl reached out with all his strength to force the ripple to stop before it spread, but the limitations Bill had placed on his power remained – and for once, Mr A had pushed himself too far.

Very slowly, blood began to trickle from Tyler Cutebiker's nostrils. Axolotl, still in possession of the Mayor's body for the most part, could only stare blankly at nothing. "I… my host body… appears to have lost the ability to see," he said quietly.

Nyarlathotep looked into Tyler's eyes with undisguised amusement. "No surprises there," he chuckled. "That's quite a haemorrhage you've got there. Ooh, and it's making your way to your host's tear glands as well!"

Tyler/Axolotl blinked rapidly. "Am I crying?" he asked nobody in particular. "Why am I crying? I don't understand, I… I…"

Blood was slowly coursing from his eyes, now, trickling down his cheeks and drenching his already-battered mayoral sash.

"Time," he said. "Bill's done something to _time."_

And with that, Axolotl crashed to the ground, host body and all. He bounced limply off a rock ledge, tumbled down an incline, and tumbled bonelessly to a stop at the lowest terrace of the asteroid. He groaned, vomited out a torrent of blood, and lay still.

Very slowly, Nyarlathotep floated down from the upper tier, silently observing the figure of the fallen god and his willing host with something like morbid interest.

"Well," he said at last. "It had to happen sooner or later. I hope it was worth it, trying to stop whatever Bill just tried to do, but I doubt it – if that chorus of _It Could Be A Wonderful World_ was any evidence. You're in a bad state, aren't you? You stretched yourself too far, and both of you have to pay for it."

His smile grew.

"Your host is dying, Axolotl," he whispered. "Your heroism ruptured something very vital in that sack of meat he calls a body. Soon, all his crimson life will have ebbed away; he'll die… _and you'll die with him_. And with nobody else inside empowered to oppose him, nobody else on the outside able to intervene, Bill is free to continue his games. Sooner or later, I imagine he'll get bored with having just one universe to play with, and conquer another; a new and hostile god will play dice with interdimensional physics. And if someone _can_ stop him – Coin, Elizabeth, Q, Dr Manhattan, Rick Sanchez, the Doctor or whoever – this dimension will be ripped apart over the course of the battle and scattered across the multiverse. Bill, Ford, Stan, Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, Soos, Gideon, McGucket – all dead, all dispersed, all potential for game and amusement gone forever.

"And you know what I think, Axolotl?"

He reached down with a long, spindly index finger, the nail instantly digging into Tyler Cutebiker's chest.

"I think that sounds really, _really_ _ **boring."**_

There was a dazzling flash of light, and a tiny particle of arcane energies jumped from Nyarlathotep's hand into the comatose body; a moment later, Tyler's eyes opened wide, Axolotl looking out at the world with undisguised shock.

"I'm going to save your bacon, Axolotl," said Nyarlathotep. "I'm going to keep you alive until we can find a means of patching up your host and your mind; it might take a few phone calls, but you will live." Nyarlathotep grinned horribly. "And in return, you will owe me favours, my friend. _I get to ask_ _whatever I want from you, and you will be bound by your word as an entity of the eldritch._ Do you consent?"

Axolotl coughed, sending a fresh spurt of blood jetting out of his mouth. But he nodded nonetheless.

"Excellent! Now, you were saying something about what Bill just did…"

Tyler Cutebiker's mouth creaked open… and instead of a coherent sentence, something _else_ emerged.

"Yfim gsv givv zmw hszggvi rxv  
Zm vmwrmt hslfow mlg szkkvm gdrxv  
Yormw gsv svzig zmw uzwv gsv hrtro  
Gsv wbrmt dliow yvtrmh rgh ertro  
Hprm gsv ooznz, xizxp gsv tozhh  
Gsv wzipvhg uzgv szh xlnv gl kzhh  
Xifhs gsv uva zmw dzik gsv szmw  
Gsv tlw-gsrmth irhv gl wlln gsv ozmw  
Zmw gslfts gsv jfvhgrlm hgroo hgzmwh gzoo  
Gsv hsrmrmt hgzi yvtrmh gl uzoo."

"Come again?" Nyarlathotep asked.

" _ **Time,"**_ Axolotl explained. _**"Bill is doing something to time…"**_

* * *

A/N: Up next, Bill's newest atrocity is revealed!

Dvmwb X dzh lmxv hl prmw  
Hl dzin lu svzig, hl xzon lu nrmw  
Yfg mld svi slkvh szev zoo yfg wrvw  
Zmw lmob gsv svzigovhh xzm hfierev


	18. The Making Of Monsters

A/N: Good lord, where the hell did the _month_ go? I'd hoped to upload this on the 15th, ladies and gents, but it seems like everything in the world decided to happen at once this February. Plus, it's only to get more complicated - early next month, I have to go back to the bloody hospital.

But in the meantime, my everlasting thanks to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed: you give me strength in these mad times.

 **Hourglass Cipher:** Oh, you have no idea... (maniacal laughter) thanks again!

 **Kraven The Hunter:**... I'm so sorry. I cannot emphasize how sorry I am, and I promise that next chapter will indeed be happy. Also, I love your suggestions to the characters, but I must point out that this time-related atrocity was something new and terrible - something Bill's never done before. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy the chapter despite the content.

 **Guest:** If it helps, there will be a brief moment of compassion in this chapter, but I should warn you it's going to be pretty depressing. Also, the Shapeshifter plays a very big role... thanks again!erlasting thanks to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed: you give me strength in these mad times.

 **Northgalus2002:** Time will tell! I hope you enjoy the chapter - thanks so much once again!

 **a very angry ravage:**...and I haven't even gotten around to brainstorming Pacifica's reaction to what's happening to Dipper! Thanks for the prompt.

 **LoyalTheorist:** I'm glad you like the story so far, but the "underlying hope" theme might suffer a bit in this installation - and I might have compensate in the next chapter. For now, thanks again and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

 **Promissa Fidel:**... this is up there among the best reviews I've received in my time as a writer. Thank you so much for your lovely, lovely review, and I hope to hear from you again - and that this latest chapter lives up to the standards set. Thanks again!

 **Fantasy Fan 223:** Don't worry, you can trust Axolotl - it was _Carter_ smiling and not Axolotl. Also, don't worry about pondering the morality of reading this story; frankly, I do the same about writing it. And your questions will be answered in this chapter... in a very grim and depressing fashion. I hope you enjoy the codes - thanks once again!

And, now, without further ado, the EXTRA-LONG LATEST CHAPTER. Feel free to criticize and correct the inevitable typos!

Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls, and I really didn't mean to make this chapter so long... it just couldn't be chainsawed without ruining the flow.

Update: 18/3/18 - found some typos and layout errors, and needed to make corrections. Sorry about that.

* * *

SLKV RH GSV WVZWORVHG ZMW HFYGOVHG KLRHLM LU ZOO.

* * *

 _What's the point of being able to transform at will if I can't even be_ _ **myself?**_

Dipper sighed, and silently willed himself to change again. For the first time in a very long while, he didn't have to watch his shadows or feel the way his muscles shifted in order to guess at what he was transforming into: even if Wendy hadn't managed to scavenge that helpful piece of mirror from the ruins in the deeper valleys, Dipper now knew _exactly_ what he was becoming – for this time, _he_ was in control.

All it took was the slightest effort of will, and he was something else. True, he wasn't _quite_ able to change his entire body yet, but he could easily pattern his skin with tiger stripes or leopard spots, change his hair into crow's feathers, add the claws of a cat to his fingertips, or give himself the maw of a bear. By now, he could make such changes on the fly, shifting from one modification to another in the space of a second... and yet…

He changed again, this time reverting to his true form. A moment later, he was Dipper again… but not quite. The smooth, unblemished flesh on the fingers of his left hand was still there, still gleaming dully in the firelight like plastic, but in the days since he'd first discovered this strange affliction, it had spread.

Now, his entire left hand had been claimed by the spreading mutation: every day, it had spread by another half-inch; bit by bit, the porcelain-like shell had claimed everything from the tips of his fingers to the end of his wrist. Soon, it would claim his arm as well. Soon, it would claim _all_ of him.

And unless his new form could find a way of breathing without a mouth or nose, it would kill him as well.

Taking a deeper breath than was strictly necessary, Dipper reached for his journal, and began hastily scribbling down the latest notes on himself: his shapeshifting, his progressive loss of features, and above all else, the details of who he used to be. By now, he didn't even care that he was playing the game exactly as Bill intended, or that the omnipotent triangle was probably laughing himself silly at Dipper's growing fear: all he cared about was making sure he left some record of what had happened to him.

That way, when he became faceless – even if it killed him – there'd be something left of his old self. And maybe, in a hundred years, someone might stumble across his journal, and allow Dipper to live on – if only in someone else's imagination.

* * *

The next day, the rain finally stopped.

And then it began to snow.

Outside the cave, puddles froze, flooded valleys iced over, and the mind-numbing patter of rain was swiftly replaced by the howl of the wind. Soon, the snow had piled up so deep outside that it buried the cave entrance, and even once the two of them had finally gotten around to digging their way out, the ledges and cliffs outside had been blanketed with a layer of snow twenty feet deep, forcing Wendy to regularly tunnel through that as well just to get within reach of the hunting grounds.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Bill expanded his repertoire to include every single chintzy Christmas/wintertime song on the planet.

Worse still, it wasn't long before the worsening conditions made daily hiking trips even more of a necessity than usual: by the end of the first week of snow, the temperature had dropped so low that their meagre collection of blankets couldn't keep out the cold, and the new creatures that had taken up residence on the plateau were too elusive to be skinned for pelts, forcing Wendy to seek out other options.

Fortunately, they hadn't been the first travellers who'd been trapped in the mountains: dotted across the broadest clifftops, she found the half-buried remains of campsites almost lost amidst the colossal snowdrifts, their inhabitants frozen solid inside their sleeping bags.

By now, Wendy was almost completely numb to the realities of stealing from the dead: in the last few months, she'd gotten so used to handling corpses that they barely registered as ex-people anymore, and taking what little they'd owned in life barely stirred a ripple in her conscience. By now, she could even look them in the eyes while doing so. As such, it wasn't until she found herself casually breaking a dead man's fingers just so she could prize a blanket out of his half-frozen grasp that she dimly realized that there might be something wrong with her. But even that little revelation was quickly lost in Bill's endless caterwauling of _The Best Things In Life Are Free._

No, the thought of crimes like this didn't disturb her in the slightest.

Besides, there were real threats out here. The new climate had brought a whole host of deadly new winter-adapted monsters into the mountains, from polar rat swarms vast enough to bury a semitrailer, to gargantuan flesh-eating slugs shielded from the cold by ton after ton of protective blubber. But somehow, Wendy adapted to all these dangers and more… all except two.

Her family was still out there, hunting for her across the desolate mountains. The possessed Corduroys never gave up and never admitted defeat, least of all in the face of impassable terrain; no matter how far Wendy ran or how well she hid her tracks, they always seemed to pick up her trail one way or another; fortunately, she didn't see them very often – getting close enough to see the parasitized lumberjacks through the snowfall would have been a death sentence – but she could still hear them calling her name, taunting her from afar.

And where the dead Corduroys went, the Shapeshifter was never far behind. And unlike her family, Wendy could all-too-easily see the monster silently pursuing her, because the Shapeshifter _wanted_ her to know that she was being hunted; it _wanted_ her to be frightened, to know there was no escape.

Time and time again, Wendy had tried to confront them. _After all,_ she'd told herself, _how hard can it be? You beat the Shapeshifter before, you can do it again… and as for your family, you know their playbook inside-out by now! You can do this._

But every time she'd prepared herself to fight, she'd always talked herself out of it. In the former case, she continuously reminded herself that the Shapeshifter had the upper hand: quite apart from the fact that it could literally be anyone or anything, this time around it wasn't hampered by the few things that had prevented it from just killing them all on their last encounter; no cramped tunnels, no Journal to lure it into a trap, and nothing to trap it _with_. This time, there was nothing holding the Shapeshifter back.

And as for the latter… they were her family. Yes, they were possessed; yes, they were trying to kill her; yes, there was nothing left of the people they'd once been… and yes, as much as it hurt to say, there was no way of curing them. But they were still her family, and every time she looked at them, every time she tried to drive all thoughts of mercy out of her head, she couldn't see the monsters that had been hunting her down across the wilderness: she saw Dad, loud, brash, pugnacious and almost comically macho, but somehow still fundamentally _caring_ despite all that; she saw Marcus, shy despite his brawn, awkward in any situation that took place indoors, constantly turning to Wendy for reassurance; she saw Kevin, the fiery little kid with a rebellious streak a mile wide, the kid who could be as temperamental as TNT as one minute and as loveable as a puppy the next; and Gus, the wild child, the hyperactive bullet perpetually ricocheting off the wall, always eager for family fun and always happy to be with Wendy.

How could she try to fight them, even if they were nothing more than husks of the people they'd once been? How could she face the prospect of killing them when they were all that remained of her family?

So, whenever she heard them calling her, she turned and ran – hoping against hope that they wouldn't find her again. But they always did, and though none of them ever got within walking distance of the cave, it didn't stop Wendy from worrying on a near-constant basis.

But a few days later, a new problem emerged that was to eclipse even the threat of the Shapeshifter and the possessed Corduroys – and judging by all the frozen corpses dotted across the mountains, it was a problem most of the other visitors had suffered as well.

The weather was only getting colder. For whatever reason, Bill had decided that blizzards weren't enough to make his toys suffer, and had sent the climate plunging to levels that would have made the South Pole look like the Bahamas: every day, the temperature seemed to plummet a little lower, until even the thermal jackets she'd pillaged could barely keep out the chill. Worse still, trees had been sparse around the clifftops back when the weather had been merely _rainy,_ and now that the refugees had been through, there was almost nothing left to burn anywhere in the mountains.

So far, Wendy had been able to make do with the few remaining logs she'd stolen from the ruined campsites, and then with the few odds and ends that the refugees had carried with them. But sooner or later, the firewood left in the mountains would be gone, and the last real barrier between them and the freezing temperatures would vanish.

Sooner or later, Wendy and Dipper would freeze to death.

* * *

"Goddammit…"

Dipper looked up from his writing, peering anxiously over the edge of the journal as he belatedly assessed the situation.

Fortunately, the disturbance was only Wendy arriving back at the cave. Not-so-fortunately, she looked even gloomier than usual – quite an achievement considering it had been over a month since Dipper had last seen a smile on her face. At present, she'd shrugged out of her jacket and was now kneeling over the ashen remains of their campfire, trying desperately to rekindle it. The wood that she'd brought back today consisted of a large bundle of chair legs, scavenged from god only knew where. As far as he could tell, it _looked_ dry enough, but for whatever reason, it just wasn't in a flammable mood. Even the classic "rubbing two sticks together" method failed miserably.

"Come on," she grumbled to herself. "Light, you… grrrrr…"

"Too damp?" Dipper asked, trying to sound more helpful than he felt.

Wendy looked up, her face instantly contorted with alarm – before once again assuming that familiar look of purest paranoia, mixed with something a little like anger. Once again, she looked at him like _he_ was the enemy, and for the life of him, Dipper couldn't figure out why. Then, she looked away with a hiss of frustration, her attention focussed on the remains of their fireplace. "No," she said. "I kept it wrapped up and out of the snow for as long as I could; it's bone-dry right now. It just won't light."

"Well, what about gasoline-"

"We're out."

"Okay, what about extra blankets? I mean, it might not keep out the worst of the cold, but-"

"We don't _have_ any extra blankets, Dipper. We need a fire, or we're either going to freeze to death or get sick from eating raw meat and die from _that_. We need a fire… and if we're ever planning on getting this junk to burn, we need kindling."

"So what can we use for kindling? Cloth, maybe?"

"I already tried that yesterday. I don't know what the hell those blankets are made of, but it's about as flammable as asbestos and probably about as safe to burn, judging by the smell. And our clothes are soaked through from sweat and snow and who knows what else, so they're just about useless right now."

"Okay, what about leaves? Bark? Pine cones, even? I hear that works well."

Wendy laughed bitterly. "There's no trees left anywhere in the mountains, Dipper!" she all but screamed. "Look at this! _Look at it!"_ She held up a splintered length of chair leg. "Do you think I'd be using this for firewood if there were any trees? Do you think there's a pine forest just hiding under all this snow?"

In spite of himself, Dipper's temper flared. "How would I know!?" he snapped. "You haven't let me out of this cave ever since we arrived, so how could I know?"

 _And the reasons for doing so have changed, haven't they? When all this started, you wanted me to stay in the cave just to make sure I was safe; now, you want me to stay here because you don't trust me._

"Oh, I don't know," Wendy retorted snidely. "Maybe because I was expecting you to actually pay attention to the fact that we're running low on firewood and about to freeze to death. Sorry, I thought you'd be interested in survival. But no, you've been sitting here, doing nothing but writing in that journal of yours, instead of-"

She paused, her eyes slowly widening in realization. "The journal," she said softly.

"…What about it?"

"You said it never runs out of pages, right?"

"Only when I'm writing, but yeah."

"…then we _do_ have kindling," said Wendy – and for a second or two, she sounded just like her old self again, exuberant and ready for action. In fact, the sense of excitement was so contagious that it took her audience a little while to realize what she'd actually said. Eventually, the word _kindling_ finally made nerve-jangling contact with Dipper's brain.

"What?"

"Kindling! Its dry paper, and we'll never run out of it! Don't you see, Dipper? We can start the fire with this!"

Dipper blinked. Suddenly, he wasn't thinking about the cold, or hunger, or the threat of freezing to death or starving or sickness or any of the other consequences of not being able to start a fire. All he could think of was the corruption slowly making its way along his arms, turning his body into featureless non-flesh as it went. Bill's mocking prediction of the future echoed across his thoughts, and suddenly, his mind's eye was blank except for that terrible vision of what Dipper would become: eyeless, mouthless, faceless, a storefront mannequin made of flesh.

That was all he'd ever be. Without the journal, nobody would ever know that he'd ever been anything other than what Bill had turned him into. If he survived the process, he'd only be able to pretend to be human by shapeshifting… and if he didn't, he'd be nothing more than a featureless corpse lying unrecognizable and unmourned in the wasteland, just another horror in a world that was already overrun with them.

And Wendy was asking him to let it happen, to watch as the only record of who he'd once been slowly burned.

"But it's my journal," he said quietly.

"And you said it'll never run out of pages, so it's not as though you're actually going to lose it for good-"

"But you'll destroy what I've written so far!"

Wendy sighed deeply. "Dipper, do the words _**we're going to freeze to death**_ register with you? We. Need. This. Fire."

"And I need my journal! Use something else! Use your own hair!"

There was a long pause, as Wendy bit down hard on her lower lip, visibly suppressing an angry outburst. "Look," she said icily, "I don't know what you _think_ is so important about that old book, but it's not like it's one of Ford's journals, is it? I mean, it doesn't have any useful information about Bill or the Henchmaniacs or the wasteland in it, right?"

"…no," Dipper admitted.

"Then what's the problem? If it just creates new pages, then why are you so worried about losing a few when you can just rewrite them later?"

For a moment, Dipper almost agreed with her. He _could_ rewrite his entries; if he had the time, he could replicate just about everything he'd produced so far… but that was the problem: he didn't know how much time he had left. For all he knew, he'd be completely faceless by next morning. He didn't have the time – and he never would.

"You don't understand, Wendy," he said, trying valiantly to keep the panic out of his voice and failing miserably. "I need that journal; it's… everything I've written about my shapeshifting abilities is in there and…" He hesitated, wondering just how much of his condition he should reveal. "It's important," he finished limply.

"There you go again," Wendy snarled. "You've been keeping a lot of secrets over the last few weeks, and they're all to do with these new powers of yours: every time I've asked you what's been happening, you've clammed up; every time I've asked about the Journal, you've tried to hide it from me – or you've lied about it. If you won't trust me, then how am I supposed to trust you?"

"I _do_ trust you!"

"You've got a very funny way of showing it, Dipper. Well, I'm assuming you _are_ Dipper at this point of course, and not just the Shapeshifter 2.0-"

" _I'm not the Shapeshifter!"_ Dipper hollered.

" _Then prove it to me!"_ Wendy screamed back. _"Tell me why the Journal's_ really _so important! What have you been keeping secret for the last few weeks?"_

Dipper took a deep breath, briefly considering just lying to her again. After all, what if telling the truth only made her trust him even _less?_ He'd already been a burden to her over the last few weeks; what if this corruption was the final straw that made her abandon him? But then reality finally set back in as he realized that, paranoid as she was, Wendy would probably see right through every single lie he could invent. So, in spite of his misgivings, Dipper explained himself as best as he could. It took about a minute of mumbling, stuttering, stammering and failure to make eye contact for him to tell his story, and by the end of it, Wendy's expression had gone from furious to utterly unreadable.

"So you're afraid that you're going to lose who you are?" she said quietly. "And you think this journal's your only way of – what? – recording who you were? Of being remembered?"

Dipper nodded.

"That's it? That's the reason you're prepared to freeze to death? You honestly think that the worst thing in the world that could possibly happen to you is being forgotten?" She was sneering now, every word dripping with contempt. "I'm supposed to sit here and slowly _die_ just because you're afraid of going faceless?"

Dipper recoiled – actually physicallyrecoiled, as if he'd been slapped. He'd almost expected Wendy to understand, maybe even to sympathize with him, and to hear the last sentence all but spat in him hurt more than the last few weeks of illness combined.

"It's more than that," he hissed indignantly. "If I do go faceless – and it doesn't kill me – then I'm going to lose everything that makes me human! The only way I'll ever be myself again is if I shapeshift, and even then I'll have to change back sooner or later; underneath, I'll always be faceless! And what about my family? They're going to… they'll…"

The words _they'll_ _think I'm a freak_ echoed back and forth across Dipper's mind, too painful to be spoken out loud.

"Nobody's going to even recognize me!" he burst out. "Mom, Dad, Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford, Mabel – they'll think I'm something Bill created to torture them, or worse!"

"So you'd rather be dead, is that it? You're so worried about what people will think about you that you'd rather die of hypothermia? Dipper, what is _wrong_ with you?! You don't even know if you'll ever see your family ever again! You don't even know if _they're_ still human! I mean, if you think that going faceless is the worst thing that could happen out here, you really _are_ Bill's favourite."

"His _what?!"_

"His favourite. His lapdog, his mascot – whatever you want to call it, you're his favourite and you get to enjoy special privileges while the rest of us suffer. I mean, all you had to deal with was uncontrollable transformations, a fever and now this facelessness thing; you didn't even have to deal with all the monster attacks I had to cope with! Face it, Dipper, no matter how bad you think you have it, everyone else on the planet has it a thousand times worse than you do."

"Easy for you to say!" Dipper shot back. "You got to stand on two legs and play at being an action hero while I had to crawl on my belly through a field of broken glass! You told me that other refugee groups kept turning you away? Well, _they tried to kill me!_ A mob of them almost ripped me to bits because they mistook me for their dead relatives! And what about all those lucky escapes? Somehow you ended up getting away without a single scratch, while I had to spend the last few weeks sick with that fever! And what about all the public humiliation, the torture and party games they put me through? I mean, at least Bill let you keep your dignity! From where I'm standing, it looks like _you're_ the favourite!"

"Don't you dare," Wendy snarled, face contorted with rage. "Don't you even _dare_ put that on me, not after everything I've done for you – the only reason why you're still alive is because I risked my life to keep you fed! And another thing, if you think I got away 'without a scratch,' then take a look at this..."

She hiked up her shirt, revealing a long, barely-healed scar running across her belly from her left hip to her ribcage. "That could have spilled my guts if I'd been slower off the mark. And what about this?" She turned, lifting her hair to reveal a cluster of jagged lacerations running down the back of her neck, terminating in a craterous puncture wound sitting just above her collarbone. "I almost bled to death from this," she said. "That sound like favouritism to you, Dip? There are real threats out there, in case you hadn't noticed: the Shapeshifter is out here – he's been tracking me down for the last few days, and every time, he seems to get a little closer to reaching this cave. I've been risking death out in the mountains, and you _still_ think the worst thing that could possibly happen is not being recognized by your family?"

Once upon a time, the mention of the Shapeshifter roaming free and hunting them down might have actually worried Dipper, but at that point he was too angry to pay any attention to it. "Oh, pardon me if I actually worry about what'll happen when we finally meet up with the others. I mean, unlike you, I haven't given up on the plan-"

Wendy's temper, which had clearly been burning pretty close to the end of its fuse over the last few minutes, suddenly exploded. "Plan?" she shouted. "PLAN?! THERE _IS_ NO PLAN, JUST A FEW PIPE DREAMS AND THE HOPE THAT EVERYTHING WILL MAGICALLY GET BETTER ONCE WE'RE OUT OF THESE MOUNTAINS! Do you seriously believe we're going to find the others, form the Wheel again, stop Bill and save the world? All that crap about Mr Carter and Mr A and Mr Whoever-The-Hell – you were being toyed with, you moron! THIS IS _HIS_ WORLD, DIPPER! _HE_ MAKES THE RULES AND WE HAVE TO LIVE WITH THEM!"

"So you're just going to roll over and let him do what he likes? You've given up on fighting and gone coward, is that it?"

If Dipper's low blow had even phased her, Wendy gave no sign. "No," she said, without missing a beat. "I'm going to _**survive**_. That's the only thing left to do at this point – survival by any means necessary for as long as I can manage, because that's the only thing I can do to spite the nacho-shaped bastard. That's all we've got left in this world: survival in spite of everything Bill throws at us, and the slim chance of spoiling his fun. That's it."

"That's it? There's nothing left for you? What about the rest of the human race – isn't saving them important? What about everyone from Gravity Falls? What about your friends? What about Mabel and Grunkle Stan and Soos? Wh-"

Dipper hastily bit back the words "what about me?"

 _She doesn't love you back,_ he reminded himself. _She told you as much before all this began. She just wants to be friends… but funnily enough she's not even managing_ that _right now, is she?_ _She can't return your feelings for her, she can't understand why the Journal's so important, and she doesn't even care about saving the world. Why are we even tolerating her, again?_

In spite of himself, even with his anger and fear at full volume, Dipper _just_ managed to keep himself from voicing his train of thought. Instead, he tried another approach: "What about your family?" he wheedled. "Don't you want to see them again-"

Before Dipper could finish his sentence, Wendy snatched up one of the larger pieces of timber from the fire and threw it at him so violently that it would have caught him square in the face if Dipper hadn't ducked at the last minute.

"MY FAMILY IS _**GONE!"**_ she roared. "DAD, MY BROTHERS, EVERYONE – BILL TOOK THEM AND MADE THEM INTO _MONSTERS_ , JUST TO MAKE ME SUFFER! THEY'RE OUT THERE RIGHT NOW WITH THE SHAPESHIFTER, AND THEY'RE HUNTING ME DOWN, AND THEY'RE GETTING CLOSER EVERY NIGHT AND I HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU WHINING ABOUT…"

She stopped, and seemed to sag.

"About a book," she continued wearily. "A book that might just be the only thing standing between us and freezing to death – assuming the Shapeshifter doesn't find us first. Plus, I don't know if you've been paying attention to the world, Dipper, nobody is going to read your miraculous record of who you used to be."

"But-"

" _Nobody gives a_ _ **shit**_ _._ I've met the refugees that live out there: they don't care about last accounts or apocalyptic diaries or whatever; the only thing they care about is survival. It'd be just another lump of firewood to them. And that's why you're going to give me the Journal-"

"No."

"-so we can both survive-"

"No!"

"And maybe get a chance to spit in Bill's eye before he gets bored with us-"

"NO!"

"Look," said Wendy, getting to her feet. "You might not care about survival at this point, but I'm not going to let you commit murder-suicide just because you happen to think frostbite's better than losing face. Give me the book: we only need enough to get the fire started, I'll avoid the important pages, and you can rewrite them once we're-"

Dipper saw her reaching for the Journal sitting in front of him, and in that moment, his mind went blank: lunging forward, his teeth immediately distended into a massive set of fanged mandibles, and Wendy had just enough time to snatch her hand back before the bear trap-shaped jaws slammed shut on the exact spot where her fingers had been a split second ago.

"I told you," Dipper snarled. "Nobody's touching my Journal, or else-"

And that was when Wendy kicked him in the head.

Hard.

Putting aside the fact that Wendy was already stronger and healthier than him at the best of times, she was also still wearing her hiking boots, so in that moment, Dipper practically achieved lift-off. Tumbling helplessly through the air, he landed with a crash against the cave wall. It took him a good five seconds to get to his feet, and by then, Wendy was making another grab for his Journal. This time, Dipper didn't bother with threats; he simply threw himself headlong at Wendy with a scream, transforming wildly as he charged. In turn, Wendy didn't hesitate either, putting her head down and meeting the oncoming charge with a berserker roar that would have made Manly Dan Corduroy himself weep tears of joy.

The two slammed together at high speed, Dipper's wildly-shifting mass briefly giving him just enough momentum to knock Wendy over, but as he darted in for the coup de grace, she grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and dragged him into the path of a right cross that sent him spinning helplessly away. For the next few minutes, the two were locked in a brutal melee that spanned the length of the cave, Wendy using the classic Corduroy brawling style of teeth-shattering haymakers and eye-watering kicks to the groin, Dipper using every single shape he'd been able to master since he'd learned how to control his transformations.

Back and forth, they fought, every move immediately countered, every counter immediately followed with another attack; it was possibly the only point in his entire life that Dipper had been able to even vaguely match Wendy's skill, but right then and there, he didn't care. He wasn't thinking of her hands around his neck, or the clublike fists he was hammering into her stomach, of the effort involved or the exhaustion or even the pain. His mind was officially blank except for the one thought that had hijacked his brain: he had to stop her; all that mattered was getting her away from the Journal, bringing her down before she ruined everything, shutting her up, _making her hurt as much as he did-_

And then, through the red murk that seemed to have enveloped his head, he head the familiar obnoxious shriek of Bill's laughter.

Dipper blinked, and as the rage left him, he belatedly realized what he was doing. At some point in the last few seconds, Wendy had managed to slam him against the cave wall and was now holding her knife to his throat – had enough to draw a slight trickle of blood. Maybe she wanted to kill him, maybe she was just threatening him; it didn't matter, because Dipper had grown another set of needle-sharp claws from his fingertips and was getting ready to plunge them into Wendy's defenceless eyes.

Somewhere in the distance, Bill was applauding.

There was a long pause, as Dipper and Wendy simultaneously realized what they had been doing – _what they had almost done_.

Then, Wendy let go of him and collapsed backwards into the dirt, suddenly struggling for breath so violently she was almost hyperventilating, a horror-stricken expression stamped on her face. Meanwhile, Dipper could only slide down the wall, his body slowly reverting to its natural form as he slumped into a boneless heap on the floor.

For what felt like an eternity, the two of them could only sit there, trembling helplessly as Bill's mocking laughter washed over them.

"I'm sorry," Dipper said quietly. He was crying, he realized, tears streaming down his face as the realization of what he'd tried to do hammered home: he'd thought he'd been guilty after he'd tried to erase Grunkle Ford's memories, but this was something new altogether; he'd just tried to _murder_ Wendy. "I'm sorry, I… I'm so stupid, I shouldn't have done that, I should have just let you have the Journal, I… I'm sorry."

"No, _I'm_ sorry, I shouldn't have said those things, I…" Wendy shook her head and covered her eyes. Perhaps she was crying too. "We're still playing his game," she said despairingly. "No matter what we do, we're just his entertainment. All he has to do is cut off our food supply or turn down the heat, and we turn on each other. What's the point in pretending we ever had a chance when we can't even trust each other?"

"But we _do_ trust each other! Well, we do _now_ , but-"

"All he has to do is put a little bit of pressure on us. That's all it takes. I've seen it happen before: the refugees who took me in – then turned on me when they realized Bill wanted me dead; the salvagers who offered me food then tried to put me in handcuffs; that suburban cult that offered me a bed and tried to cut my throat in my sleep… you put your trust in people, and Bill makes sure you suffer for it. I think Ford had the right idea all along, Dipper: you can't trust anyone."

"Yes you can! Just because Bill's done his best to make the situation as bad as possible and the Shapeshifter's out there doesn't mean – I mean, yes, it could be anyone or anything at all, but that doesn't mean you should stop trusting literally…" Dipper very slowly trailed off as the logical implications of his previous sentence slowly clattered into place.

"I'm an idiot," he said quietly.

Wendy gave him a bemused look.

"I'm serious; I _saw_ the Shapeshifter do this the last time – I was looking right at him when he tried the same trick back in the cryotube, but it just never occurred to me to try it myself!"

"Try what?"

By way of an answer, Dipper hauled himself off the cavern floor and strode over to the fireplace, where he began hastily gathering up the bits of old furniture that had been scattered by the brawl and assembling them around him into a proper campfire. Then, he began to concentrate.

This newest change was utterly unprecedented, for this time he wouldn't just be altering a part of his body, but transforming his entire physical form from the organic to the purely elemental. He knew this was possible: he'd seen it done before, and even though he'd only seen it for a split-second or two, he wasn't likely to forget the sight or the circumstances in a hurry.

So, he focussed all his attention on mimicking that one all-important form, willing his tissues to undergo the same vital alchemy they'd used in his last few transformations. With all his strength, he concentrated.

And concentrated.

And concentrated.

And-

Suddenly, Dipper was aflame, a human-shaped inferno standing amidst the timbers of the rekindled campfire.

He hadn't caught fire or spontaneously combusted or erupted or anything like that: his body had simply changed, had transmuted from flesh and blood to living fire, had lost all tangibility and become a flickering orange ghost of rippling heat. He could see his hands in front of him, recognize human fingers remade into tiny guttering tongues of flame, even see his feet billowing at the heart of the roaring campfire; in fact, if that mirror hadn't been out of view, he'd be willing to bet everything in the world that he still had a human face.

"There," he said, his voice a harsh, rustling whisper – like dry twigs burning and crackling in a fireplace. "Now we've got all the heat we need."

He stepped out of the campfire and allowed his true form to reassert himself, the flames silently coalescing back into human flesh – his clothes hastily rematerializing around his body as it took shape once more.

For a moment, Wendy could only gape at him in astonishment, completely flummoxed as she looked from him to the merrily burning campfire. Then, for the second time in what seemed like an eternity, she smiled… and hugged him – actually threw her arms around him and _hugged_ him.

For a time, the cave was silent but for the crackling of the fire – and the distant howl of Pyronica belting out a cover of "Kiss Of Fire."

"Dipper?" Wendy murmured, her voice suddenly weary. "Do you think you're okay with keeping watch this time?"

"Sure. Why?"

"Well, I think I've been awake for about three days now and I've been eating raw coffee just to stop myself from nodding off, but we're out now, so…"

Dipper blinked. "Um, that's fine. You can sleep as long as you-"

But Wendy was already slumping forwards onto Dipper's shoulder, fast asleep long before he could lower her to the ground.

* * *

Wendy wasn't sure how long she was asleep for: it could have been an hour, it could have been a week – she wasn't sure, and frankly it didn't matter. All she knew was that, for the first time since Weirdmageddon had gone global, she didn't have nightmares; her sleep was deep, dreamless and untroubled.

Undisturbed – at least until Bill literally flipped the mountains upside down.

Suddenly upside down and pinned to the ceiling by a heap of rubble, suddenly aware of the screams and shouts, Wendy lurched awake just in time to see Dipper falling helplessly out of bed. Even from her position half-crushed against the roof, she could clearly see him bouncing painfully off the walls and ricocheting – slowly but surely – towards the cave's entrance… and the cliff that lay beyond it.

"WENDY, HELP!"

She saw him shifting forms, trying to find something that would allow him to escape; piton-like claws, grasping tentacles, suckered palms, anything that could give him a grip on the wall as it rocketed past him. But every time he managed to find a handhold somewhere, Bill simply shook the mountains once again and dislodged him, shaking him closer and closer to the brink.

In that moment, Wendy tore herself free of the rubble and lunged forward, trying to grab his outstretched hands, to seize him by any one of the dozens upon dozens of limbs he was randomly sprouting, but for once, Wendy was too slow off the mark. Sleep had made her slow and complacent, made her _clumsy,_ and without the desperate of the last few days fuelling her body, she couldn't reach his hand in time.

And with that, Dipper was airborne.

For a split second, she actually saw him trying to form wings, trying to save himself from the inevitable death dive, but by then it was too late: gravity had taken hold and was already hauling him into the abyss. She saw him crash against the mountainside, bouncing off the harsh rock wall with a loud crunch and a scream of pain; and then… the last she saw of him was the sight of his body spiralling into the snowstorm that now the lowest foothills of the mountains from sight.

Then, he was gone.

And without warning, Bill was hovering behind her.

"NOW **THAT'S** ENTERTAINMENT!" he boomed.

In spite of herself, Wendy actually reached for a weapon. Even though she knew attacking him would be pointless, she wished she still had her crossbow by her side, if only so she could finally plant a bolt squarely in that smirking eye of his – the only logical way of shutting the megalomaniacal nacho up. But alas, all she had was her knife and maybe a torch from the fire.

"Well!" Bill cackled triumphantly. "It looks like Pine Tree's gone skydiving, Red! How does that make you feel? Angry? Relieved? Frightened? Or are you already in mourning? I mean, after all those survivalist courses, you know better than anyone else that your friend's as good as dead down there."

"You won't kill him," said Wendy, unable to hide the tremor in her voice. "He's your –"

"My _favourite?_ Is that what you were going to call him?"

Wendy cringed, instantly overwhelmed by a wave of regret.

"Pine Tree's not my favourite, Red," Bill chuckled. "Not anymore. The last few weeks have been a blast, but he's just not as fun as he used to be: frankly, the facelessness bit and the setup to a mutual kill was just my attempt at spicing up the action, just in case I hadn't played out every possibility. But all games have to end sooner or later, and Pine Tree's long since outlived his entertainment value."

"You're just going to let him die?"

"Maybe. Right now, it's a race to see what'll kill him first: exposure, starvation, his injuries… or the monsters. I mean, your dad and brothers might only have eyes for you, but I'm pretty sure the old tagalong from the bunker might have some words to mince with Pine Tree."

Wendy's heart froze. "You mean the Shapeshifter's going after _him?"_ she whispered.

"Why not? After all, it's got a special hate-on for Pine Tree: he actually _hurt_ it, took back the journal when it was so close to escaping with the grand prize… and of course, it wants to make sure that he checks out wearing the expression it always wanted to see. Kinda fitting, don't you think? The kid who thought he could shapeshift his way to victory ends up getting offed by a _real_ Shapeshifter. Aw, don't look so sad, I'm sure there'll be enough of Pine Tree left for you to remember him by: a bit of bone here, a scrap of clothing there – the Shapeshifter likes his little trophies, believe it or not."

"You _bastard."_

"Manners, Red. That's no way to behave in front of guests, is it, boys?"

Wendy very slowly turned towards the cavern entrance, and with a massive jolt to her heart, saw the figures standing there – blocking her exit. Even with the fire dying and the shadows deepening by the second, there was no mistaking Dad's hulking frame or the distinctive huddle of her brothers.

The possessed Corduroys had finally found her… and this time, there'd be no escape.

* * *

Dipper wasn't sure where he'd landed; he didn't know how far he'd fallen from the cave, if it was possible to climb back up, or even if this place had existed until he'd gone skydiving towards it; he vividly recalled the sound of shattering rock below him as he fell, so maybe Bill had literally tore the ground open just so he could throw him down here.

All he knew was that he was now lying at the bottom of a very deep hole in the ground, staring up at the crevasse through which he'd just fallen. He didn't know how he'd survived falling so far: by rights he should have ended up splattered all over the mountains. Maybe Bill really was intent on keeping him alive as a punching bag, but given that he'd just thrown him off a cliff, Dipper couldn't possibly imagine why.

Unfortunately, climbing his way out of the crevasse didn't seem possible at this point, not with walls _this_ smooth. So unless he could learn to form proper wings, he wasn't getting out any time soon.

"What next?" he groaned.

And from somewhere not too far away, Bill began to laugh. "Check out your arm, Pine Tree," he chuckled. "You've forgotten something important."

Dipper looked, and immediately regretted it: the smooth, featureless infection that had claimed his fingers had already overtaken the rest of his left hand… and as he watched, he realized with another ice-cold jolt to his heart that it was beginning to pick up speed. Even as he watched, it colonized first his wrist, before swiftly moving on to his forearm and elbow; in seconds, it had claimed his entire arm, erasing every recognizable feature in its path, leaving only a porcelain-smooth homogenized shell in its wake. Then it was oozing along his shoulder and pouring across his torso – where it could spread all over his body.

Heart hammering, Dipper could only watch as the infection slid inexorably up his neck. He couldn't see it after that, but he could feel it bubbling and burning his flesh as it crept over the edge of his jaw, and feel the distinctive tingle of nerve endings fizzing out as the tide flowed inwards across his face.

"You were never going to let me see my friends and family again, were you?" Dipper asked quietly. He was trying not to cry, and failing miserably. "You just wanted to get my hopes up before I suffocated to death."

If anything, Bill laughed even harder. "Oh come on, Pine Tree! Do you really think I'd end the game on something so… anticlimactic? Facelessness isn't the end, but a beginning you couldn't even imagine: I've got something much more entertaining in mind for _**YOU."**_

Dipper opened his mouth to demand an answer, but then the infection swept over his mouth, sealing his lips shut and leaving him mumbling through a hardening membrane of flesh.

A moment later, a wave of liquid non-flesh descended over what was left of his features, veiling his eyes, ears and nostrils in remoulding matter – instantly plunging Dipper into stygian darkness. For almost a minute, he writhed helplessly, blind, deaf and slowly suffocating, clawing wildly at the blank expanse of his face in a desperate attempt to open an airhole for his burning lungs.

Then nothingness was all he knew.

* * *

"No more hiding, Wendy," Dad chortled, idly passing his axe from one colossal hand to the next. "The Maggot Hive is ready for you. Time to join the family."

"Or die," Marcus sneered. "Cutting your own throat's always an option."

He was armed with Wendy's own hand-axe, she realized, and even with such horror staring he in the face and the prospect of being forced to murder her own family looming on the horizon, Wendy actually felt the faintest spasm of anger – a relic of the anger she'd once felt when the boys had decided to "borrow" her possessions.

"She won't kill herself," said Kevin. He too was armed with another one of Wendy's belongings, her long-lost crossbow shouldered and aimed squarely at her head. "She's a Corduroy. She's one of us, whether she likes it or not. She'll either join us-"

"Or kill us," Gus finished. He was armed with a bowie knife, the oversized blade sitting in his tiny hands like a sword, but judging from the clattering and clunking from his belt, he was probably armed with at least a dozen other blades.

For her part, Wendy said nothing. After all, she already knew they couldn't be negotiated with: god only knew she'd tried on her first run-in and all the other traumatizing run-ins that had followed in the days before she'd found Dipper again. There was no bribing them, no tricking them, no appealing to their better natures (because they didn't have any) – only running, fighting, surrendering… or dying. What would be the point in saying anything?

"So what'll be, Wendy?" Dad asked, unable to keep the laughter from his voice. "Do you give in, or do you fight?"

She had to run.

Running was the only option she had.

Running was the only sane reaction.

Running was her only means of saving herself and her family.

Running was…

 _Impossible._

She was dimly aware of the dwindling campfire behind her as she slowly backed away, and as its heat washed over her, memory belatedly dredged up a choice sentence: _burn the bodies,_ Dad had said, back when this nightmare had begun. _Split the skulls, scatter the worms and burn the bodies._

And as the parasite-Corduroys slowly closed in, Wendy acted instinctively. Diving in the direction of the campfire, she snatched up a burning chair-leg from the remains of the campfire and flung it at the advancing gang as hard as she possibly good. Dad sidestepped the oncoming torch with startling ease, once again a thousand times more agile than his massive frame implied; Kevin ducked and Gus simply let the missile soar harmlessly over his head… but Marcus was every bit as clumsy as he had been in the days before Weirdmageddon, and his one attempt to dodge only resulted in the torch catching him square in the chest.

His shirt ablaze and swiftly spreading to the rest of his clothes, Marcus immediately began blundering helplessly around, trying to put himself out. Meanwhile, the rest of the family charged Wendy en mass, the worms in their eyes glowing possessively as they closed in on her. But without Marcus lining up on the left, they'd left a gap in their approach – tiny, but just enough for Wendy to make a dash for the exit. Ducking a crossbow bolt from Kevin and side-stepping a wild swing of Gus's knife, she dived for the gap in their defences, leaping past the oncoming gang.

And then, just as the mouth of the cavern loomed ahead of her, something brought her shuddering to a halt, sending a fresh surge of pain rushing into her scalp: as always quicker than his size implied, Dad had grabbed her by the hair as she'd dashed past him, ham-sized fists instantly fastening around her vivid red tresses – and was now dragging her back into the cave.

Yowling in pain, Wendy tried to struggle free, to kick Dad's hands away, to slash at him, _anything_ that would free herself from the vicelike grip on her hair, but nothing could dislodge him – and the rest of the family was slowly closing in. In the end, there was only one option: drawing her knife once more, she sliced clean through her outstretched locks, leaving Dad to crash helplessly to the ground, still clutching the shredded remains of Wendy's hair.

Now free, she dived for the exit – only for a freshly-extinguished Marcus to crash into her at high speed, hatchet at the ready. Caught off-guard, she only just managed to catch the axe by the shaft at the last minute, stopping the blade less than an inch from her face; undeterred, her brother leaned in, forcing the hatchet closer and closer, trying to drive it into her unprotected eyes. Had it been anyone else, Wendy might have been able to disarm them with ease, but for all his clumsiness, Marcus had the classic Corduroy muscle on his side; plus, after all the bouts of arm-wrestling they'd suffered through as children, he knew Wendy's playbook off by heart just as she knew his.

For twelve heart-stopping seconds, Wendy and Marcus wrestled for the hatchet, a life-or-death struggle briefly reduced to another sibling argument over a stolen toy. The other Corduroys didn't interfere, but merely gathered around to watch the spectacle, their pallid faces twisted into excited grins. Marcus grinned as well, the worms and maggots in his eyes glowing brightly as he leaned forward, putting all his weight on the axe.

Wendy bit back a scream as she felt the axe very slowly dig into her face, carving a bloody line through her left eyebrow and across her forehead. For the briefest of instants, she almost considered just letting him do his worst, but just as quickly, she put aside the idea as futile; she'd promised herself to survive even in the face of impossible odds, to spite Bill for as long as she was able, and she wasn't prepared to break the promise now.

So, she kicked out at Marcus's knee as hard as she could, toppling him backwards, allowing Wendy to lunge forward and send the axe springing back towards her brother's face, this with all her muscle behind it. With a loud, wet crunch, the two combatants hit the ground; a moment later, Wendy was on her feet again, knife in hand and ready for the inevitable counterattack.

But the counterattack never came.

Marcus didn't budge.

Too late, Wendy realized exactly why: in the final pushback, the axe had been embedded in her brother's face, and the fall to the ground had driven it through his skull. Marcus was now lying prone on the cavern floor, his head cleaved open and a pool of blood slowly gathering under the ruin of his cranium. Already, the glowing worms within were scattering in all directions, fleeing the shattered skull as fast as they could, most of them making a break for the safety of the other parasitized Corduroys.

And in their wake, they left Marcus Corduroy lying cold on the floor, a look of last-minute surprise forever stamped on his dead features.

Then, as the first horrified inklings of what she had just done began creeping into Wendy's mind, Gus made his move: once again the hyperactive human bullet, he broke into a run and made a break for Wendy, too fast to be intercepted, too agile to be blocked. With one tremendous leap, he catapulted himself through the air, latching onto Wendy's back and clawing his way up to her shoulders.

"My turn, big sis!" he shrieked. "Let's see if you're any quicker than you used to be!"

Next second, Gus's bowie knife sank into Wendy's left arm just below the shoulder, eliciting a howl of agony. Acting instinctively, Wendy flung herself backwards as hard as she could, pummelling herself against the cave wall in a desperate attempt to dislodge him, but Gus had a grip almost as vicelike as his father's and couldn't be budged, not even after his knife went flying out of his hand on the second collision. On the third impact, he simply leaned forward and bit down hard on Wendy's right ear – then with one violent twist of his jaws, _tore it away._

Wendy staggered helplessly away, blood pouring merrily from the stump where her ear had once been. Dizzy, disoriented and quivering from the pain, she recovered just in time to see Dad readying his axe for a killing blow, while Kevin lined up on the opposite flank, taking careful aim with the crossbow.

"Think fast, Wendy!" he cackled.

Acting instinctively, she turned away; it turned out to be the one thing that saved her life, for Kevin's bolt caught Gus square in the back, right where her head had been just seconds ago. As Gus's scream rang out across the cave, her little brother's grip loosened just enough for Wendy to fling him aside, before making a grab for the axe still embedded in Marcus's skull. With one almighty wrench, she tore it free and brought it crashing down on Gus's defenceless body: she wasn't thinking about fleeing anymore, nor was she thinking about sparing her family; in that single furious instant, all she cared about was the searing pain in her face and the desperate need to make sure her attackers never had a chance to hurt her again.

Her first swing caught Gus square in the shoulder, knocking his newest blade from his hands; the next crashed into his chest, tearing open his ribcage; the third sliced aside his hands even as he tried to shield himself and landed squarely in his skull. After that, Wendy just kept hitting him, cleaving wildly at his body with wild berserk abandon, giving full vent to her spleen as she tore into him – only stopping once she realized that her little brother had finally stopped moving and the maggots were once again making their escape.

Then, she rounded on Kevin, who still struggling to reload his crossbow. He had just enough time to fire again, barely grazing her shoulder as she charged towards him, before her axe cleaved through his throat. Immediately, he fell to his knees, blood gushing from the enormous wound in his neck; then, as he sagged to the ground, Wendy planted her boot in his back and brought the axe down on his throat once more, sending his head tumbling away.

Finally, Dad went charging in, threshing the air with his axe with swift, deadly swings that once again belied his gigantic physique. But Wendy, flooded with adrenaline and long since having given up on holding back, was even quicker: ducking his first swing and leaping over his second, she brought her own axe down hard on his right arm, cleaving through his elbow. Bellowing like a wounded bear, Dad dropped the axe and lashed out at her with his left fist, sending an arm the size and thickness of a redwood tree-trunk hurtling in her direction, but once again, Wendy simply wasn't there.

Her next blow caught him in the ankle just above the Achilles tendon, sending him crashing to his knees. Now forced to rely on his left hand, he clumsily groped for the axe, but Wendy hit him hard in the jaw with the flat of her hatchet, disorienting him just long enough to bring the blade swishing down – first on the left hand, then on the right.

For what seemed like days, Manly Dad Corduroy knelt there, staring in bemusement at the ragged stumps of his arms. Then, he began to laugh.

"Good," he chuckled. "Good." He was smiling in spite of his injuries, his grin a mass of oily blood and broken teeth. "Exactly as he wanted. I'm proud of you, Wendy."

Then her axe split his skull open, and he said no more.

For the next few minutes, Wendy fell into a deep, chilly silence as she went about the grim process of bandaging her wounds and clearing away the refuse of the battle. Thankfully, the medical kit she'd scavenged from the snowfields still had enough bandages and antiseptic to clear up the worst of her injuries, though of course there was no repairing the damage to her ear beyond staunching the bleeding. Far more arduous was the work of disposing of the bodies of her family: even once she'd been able to rekindle the fire, it took a long time for the corpses to fully ignite without any decent accelerant on hand, and they didn't burn easily once they finally did.

Eventually, however, the last vestiges of the possessed Corduroys was reduced to ashes, and the maggots that had been controlling them were burned away as well.

Then – and only then – did Wendy finally sink to her knees and begin to sob.

* * *

Dipper's eyes shot open, immediately taking in the near-lightless gloom of the cave around him.

Air – cold, clammy and malodorous – filled his lungs.

 _I'm alive._

Gasping for breath, he frantically ran his hands across his face; he could already tell that he could see and breathe again, but he needed to know that he actually had features – that he wasn't completely faceless. To his immense relief, he _just_ recognized the shapes of a mouth and eyes… a mouth that seemed far too wide to be human and a pair of eyes that felt as large as tennis balls.

Whatever had happened, it had once again changed him on what seemed to be a permanent basis: his hair was gone, leaving him completely bald; his nose had vanished as well; even the shape of his head felt unmistakeably different... and looking down at his hands, he could tell at once that appeared to be missing several fingers – though the ones that remained seemed far longer than usual.

 _What did Bill do to me?_

With a low groan, he got to his feet, knees bending in unnatural directions as he did so. Bit by bit, he reassembled the tattered remains of his clothing: it seemed at last that he'd found a situation that his clothes couldn't regenerate through, because his shirt had been ripped almost in half, his pants were barely held on by the tattered remains of his belt, and his shoes appeared to have exploded.

His cap seemed to be the only concrete survivor, and even that was still torn in places – not to mention splattered with blood from all the cuts that Dipper has sustained in the fall from the cliff. More to the point, the cap itself didn't seem to fit his head too well anymore: it kept chafing his bare scalp or falling off at odd interval – but that wasn't a problem with the cap, was it?

It was a problem with _him._

 _Everything's changed,_ Dipper realized. _My body's been altered permanently, that's for sure, but it's definitely not faceless. Question is, why did Bill lie to me about staying faceless, not being recognized by my family and all that?_

 _Well, fairly obvious answer there, Dipper: he did it because he liked watching you panic._

 _Alright then, better question: why did Bill set this up?_

 _Being faceless eventually made me into something new, but what, and_ _ **why?**_

Sighing, he decided to put off any further questions until he was back at the cave with Wendy. However, as he strode over to the nearest wall, he once again realized that there was no way out of this crevasse: the walls were too smooth to grip without proper mountaineering equipment, and there were no passageways or tunnels leading out of the pit.

Unless…

Concentrating with all his might, Dipper forced his body to change in unprecedented ways – once again adopting a new form entirely… and to his delight, he found himself warping, shrinking, _shifting_ into a new form altogether: his head narrowed and tapered into a beak, feathers erupted from beneath his skin, his arms expanded and reshaped themselves into wings – and within a matter of seconds, Dipper had become an arctic tern.

Whatever Bill had done to him, it had made shapeshifting easier than ever before. And with it, it had given him a route back to the Wendy, and maybe – _just maybe_ – it could give him an edge against Bill himself.

Spreading his wings and flapping as hard as his newfound body could manage, Dipper took flight, and – after a few false starts – began rising slowly but surely towards the sky.

 _Question is, can I find my way back to the cave?_

* * *

Outside the crevasse, the snowstorm had eased and the temperature had risen slightly, so if nothing else Dipper didn't have to worry about freezing to death on the way up. Plus, with the sky clear for a change, it allowed him an unimpeded view of the cliffs as he ascended, so if nothing else he'd be able to find the cave again very quickly.

But as he rose steadily higher, he spotted something glinting on one of the lower ledges. Thinking he might have caught a glimpse of a campfire, he swooped in to investigate, hoping that he'd finally made it back to the cave.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the cave.

It wasn't even a campfire.

The Shapeshifter was sitting on the ledge ahead, baleful red eyes fixed on him, mismatched arms raised to attack.

Panicking, Dipper veered away in mid-flight, swerving wildly across the sky as he grappled with the complicated process of avoiding the monster's reach and flying off in the opposite direction entirely. Unfortunately, he still hadn't completely mastered his newfound musculature, and his attempts only resulted in him crashing headlong into the ledge, landing in a heap of wildly-flapping wings at the Shapeshifter's feet.

Transforming on instinct, he sprouted as many fangs, claws, quills, stingers, poison glands, tentacles and other unpleasant appendages as he could possibly imagine, layered his body with scales, bony plates and leathery hides, and braced himself for the worst. For almost half a minute he sat there, waiting for the inevitable assault on his makeshift defences – until he finally realized that it didn't appear to be inbound.

For some reason, the Shapeshifter wasn't attacking.

It hadn't taken on some new and unpleasant shape, it hadn't raised its asymmetrical limbs to fight, it hadn't readied its jaws to take a bite out of him, and in point of fact, it hadn't even moved. And as Dipper tentatively crept closer, he realized it wasn't even _looking_ at him. It was still looking up at the sky, its gaze fixed on the point on the horizon where it'd first seen him.

Trembling, Dipper reached out with one freshly-formed limb, distending it further and further until his now-tentacular arm was sitting just below the Shapeshifter's bulbous red eyes. Then, he tentatively waved his hand back and forth in a way that it couldn't possibly fail to notice.

No response.

Feeling a bit devil-may-care by that point, Dipper then extended a finger and poked the Shapeshifter as hard as he could in the left eye.

Not only did the Shapeshifter fail to respond to the middle finger that had just been rammed into its left eyeball, but Dipper's hand passed right through the monster's head as if it were no more tangible than smoke. Stunned, Dipper waved his hand back and forth through the Shapeshifter's head, watching in astonishment as his fingers phased cleanly through the skull of the creature. It didn't move, not even when Dipper plucked up his courage and stepped right through it.

And as he watched, the insubstantial Shapeshifter began to fade, twitching and shuddering until it disappeared entirely, its body harmlessly dissipating into meaningless static.

Whatever had been hunting Wendy for the last few days hadn't been real, Dipper realized. The _real_ Shapeshifter was still in the bunker where they'd left it, presumably still frozen (or so he hoped); maybe Bill hadn't been able to track down the genuine article, maybe he'd just preferred to frighten the two of them with fakeries. Whatever the case, one indisputable fact remained:

 _This_ Shapeshifter was just an illusion.

* * *

Two days later, Dipper finally found his way back to the cave, if only because he'd recognized the tunnels that Wendy had dug in the snow surrounding it, collapsed though they were by now.

By that point, however, he was on the verge of collapse after close to five hours of uninterrupted flight, and even after Dipper transformed back, the pain and fatigue in his arms still lingered for a time – even though the muscles that had actually been used in his ascent technically didn't exist anymore.

In fact, he was so exhausted that a strong breeze nearly sent him toppling backwards off the edge of the cliff, and he only just managed to save his hat from spiralling off into the abyss. Alas, the cap still didn't fit on his head, and his fingers were too numb from exertion to do anything but burrow through the snow, so he just bit down hard on the brim and went on tunnelling towards the cave with the cap held safely in his jaws.

It wasn't the most flattering look on the planet, but then again it wasn't as if he had any concrete idea of what he looked like anyway. Besides, if nothing else, the snow helped salve the phantom pain in his muscles and the chill in the air gave him just enough incentive to keep moving: thus, after several minutes of digging, the mouth of the cave appeared ahead and Dipper staggered inside, too tired to even take the hat out of his mouth.

Immediately, four things became apparent to Dipper: first of all, the cave appeared to be unoccupied. Secondly, though the campfire was almost dead by now, the cave smelled very strongly of burnt flesh, a smell that he'd become worryingly familiar with in the days before he'd met up with Wendy again. Secondly, four charred corpses had been stacked next to the entrance, their skulls reduced to pulped bone; judging by the blackened marks on the floor of the cave, someone had been trying to drag them outside, but had either given up or simply run out of energy – no surprise, given the size of the first two bodies. Thirdly, someone had been gathering stones from around the cave and assembling them into piles – perhaps burial mounds; crudely scratched into the topmost stone of each pile was a name: "Dad," "Marcus," "Kevin," "Gus," and…

Somewhere in the distance, Bill began softly crooning out a cover of "One More Kiss, Dear."

And as the music washed over him, a muffled hiss of breath drew Dipper's attention away from the last burial mound. A quick glance in the direction of the noise revealed that the campsite wasn't deserted after all, for there was a human shape lying at the far end of the cave, almost completely hidden by the shadows beyond the fire. Dipper could already tell who it was going to be, but even he couldn't quite suppress a gasp of shock at the sight of the figure huddled under the blanket.

The last few days hadn't been kind to Wendy.

Her right ear was missing, little more than a bandaged crater in the side of her head; a long scar had torn across her left eyebrow and carved a trench through her forehead, stopping just above her hairline; her long crimson tress had been roughly sliced away, leaving only a ragged mass of hair barely long enough to reach her shoulders; and even with her polar gear still on and a blanket tossed over her, she was still shivering, still curled into a trembling, foetal ball – but whether it was due to the sheer cold or due to whatever trauma she'd endured in the days since Dipper had last seen her was impossible to guess.

Dipper would have gladly woken her up at that point, but one look at the space around her quickly put an end to that particular notion. Scattered around Wendy's sleeping form was a small arsenal of weaponry: an oversized wood axe, a crossbow and a quiver of bolts, at least a dozen knives… and of course, Wendy's own trusty hatchet. For some reason, Dipper's own Journal appeared to be hidden among the armoury as well.

With all these armaments within reach, disturbing her would have been a very bad idea indeed; even if Wendy didn't immediately go on the attack, the last thing she needed was another unpleasant shock. Instead, Dipper decided to wait for her to wake up on her own: so, pausing only to edge carefully around the needle-sharp tip of the nearest knife, he began slowly backing away from the weaponry-

-and promptly stumbled into one of the burial mounds, knocking it over with a loud crash of falling rocks.

Wendy's eyes snapped open.

For a moment, she could only lie there, staring up at Dipper with a look of horrified disbelief etched upon her face.

Then without warning, she was on her feet and in motion, hatchet in hand, screaming at the top of her voice.

Dipper barely had enough to realize that Wendy was actually aiming for him before the first swing of the axe caught him square in the chest, forcing him to his knees (and sending his cap fluttering to the cave floor for good measure).

The pain was nothing short of incredible, an eruption of shock rippling out across his middle, a searing, white-hot fire igniting every nerve-ending as the axe-blade buried itself in his flesh. For a moment, it felt as though he could only scream; but then the axe was wrenched free, and he frantically held out a hand in an attempt to shield himself – only for Wendy to bring her axe swinging down on that too. Thankfully, the blade was at the wrong angle for it to sever his hand (small mercies and little else), so instead it buried itself in his shoulder, sending a fresh wave of pain crackling down his spine.

"YOU _KILLED HIM!"_ Wendy screamed. "YOU KILLED HIM YOU KILLED HIM YOU KILLED HIM!"

In spite of himself, Dipper actually tried to ask what the hell she was talking about, to placate her, to beg for mercy – to say anything that might put the brakes on the ongoing assault. Nothing worked: Wendy couldn't hear him over the sound of her own screams, and every single wrench of the axe elicited a fresh howl of pain from Dipper, interrupting him right when he might have been able to communicate something.

So instead, he forced himself upright and tried to grab the axe out of Wendy's hand, hoping against hope that he'd be able to talk her down once she was disarmed. However, whatever Bill had done to him seemed to have made Dipper much stronger than before, and the charge ended up knocking Wendy off her feet; rolling away, she snatched up the crossbow as she tumbled past, and as she ground to halt, shouldered the weapon and took careful aim.

Too late, Dipper realized the crossbow was already loaded.

"Wait-!"

This time, pain didn't quite describe the experience: this was _agony_ , excruciating in its intensity, every movement sending another jagged lance of pain into his body. At least pain of the axe had ended when the damn thing had finally been ripped free; the crossbow bolt _couldn't_ be removed: it had lodged deep in the flesh of his belly and every time Dipper tried to get a grip on it, it only seemed to sink deeper. The arrowhead was barbed and hooked, he realized, and he was only doing himself more damage by trying to force it out. But somehow, with another surge of the same unnatural strength, he was eventually able to get a good grip on the bolt and tear it loose. Panting, he looked up-

-just in time to get the butt of an axe-handle square in the face. Senses reeling, Dipper crashed to the dirt and lay there like an upturned turtle, writhing impotently as he struggled to upright himself.

"Murderer!" Wendy screamed. "You killed Dipper! You killed my friend!"

 _Wait, what?_

But Wendy wasn't interested in explaining herself: by the time Dipper had recovered and gotten back on his feet, she was already gone, sprinting for the cave entrance and pausing only to bring down a thick parcel of snow in front of it – just to make sure he couldn't follow her.

"You won't get me that easily!" she screamed over her shoulder. "You'll have to take me when I'm wide awake if you want to kill me!"

And then, she was gone.

A quick glance around the cavern revealed that, she'd also taken the time to gather as much of her equipment as possible, presumably while he'd been trying to rip the bolt out of his guts: along with her hatchet, crossbow and quiver, she'd also taken three of the knives, and Dipper's Journal.

Also, for some reason, she'd also taken his hat from where it had fallen during the initial attack.

Groaning, Dipper leaned against the cave wall and assessed his injuries. Why had she attacked him? What had she meant by "you killed Dipper?" Couldn't she tell that Dipper had been standing right in front of her? Had Bill really made him that unrecognizable? But even if he had made him look like a monster, that still didn't explain everything.

And then, it hit him: the cap. He'd been holding his hat in his mouth when she'd first seen him… and it had been covered in bloodstains.

 _Bloodstained hat + monstrous-looking critter showing up at the cave + hat in monster's mouth = Dipper's dead?_

 _No, no, no, that still doesn't answer everything. For one thing, what did Bill do to my face? What is it about me that made her instantly think "murderer?" And more to the point, why am I still alive? I'd have thought I'd have passed out by now, what with all this blood and-_

Dipper froze as his swept across his wounds, wounds that even now were beginning to heal.

Blood still coated his chest, however.

 _Green_ blood.

Heart racing, he hurried over his old seat at the back of the cave, frantically scanning the area for the chunk of mirror that he'd been guiding his earliest transformations by. At last, he found it half-buried under a pile of dirt kicked up during the fight, and after dusting it off, he at long last realized just what Bill had done to him.

His legs were still human for the most part.

His frame was taller and more muscular than before – to the point that he'd been at least a head taller than Wendy – but otherwise there was nothing abnormal about it.

His arms, his chest, his shoulders were distended almost beyond recognition and layered with clammy white grub-skin – yet for all that, still partly human.

But it was the face that finally clued him in – the bulbous red eyes, the elongated face, the mandible-ringed jaws, the tiny nub-like antennae.

Staring back him from the mirror was the face of the Shapeshifter.

* * *

For what felt like hours, Dipper tried to shapeshift the new face away: he took the form of a crow, an eagle, a tiger, a poodle, an anaconda, a donkey, but as with the facelessness that had so threatened him a few days ago, mere transformation couldn't erase it. Every time he returned to his natural form, he still bore the face and developing body of the Shapeshifter.

He even tried shapeshifting into his old form – his _real_ form – hoping that he could just wear the face of Dipper Pines forever… but he couldn't hold onto different bodies indefinitely, and sooner or later he reverted to the face of the Shapeshifter.

In the end, he couldn't carry on: he gave up, collapsing to the floor in a defeated slump. And in that moment, Bill Cipher appeared, smugger than ever.

"So we've finally accepted the inevitable, have we?" he cackled. "Finally come to terms with what you're going to be from now on?"

"Drop dead."

"Almost did. Didn't much care for it, and that's why I'm having such fun now!"

Dipper let out a low groan. "Why couldn't you have just done something simple? Why couldn't you have just tortured me with shapeshifting until I went completely nuts? I mean, why did you decide to turn me into the _Shapeshifter_ of all things? Was it really just so you could make Wendy attack me?"

"Aw, if it was as simple as that, Pine Tree, I woulda done it right away. No, as far as Red goes, I've been trying to break her brain for a little while now, and I've been having a whale of a time getting it to work just right: putting her through one hell after another? That was fun _and_ effective. Setting her own family against her? Oh, you shoulda seen her losing her marbles over that one. Trapping her in a cave with you and watching the paranoia wear her down? With a little bit of encouragement, the show just about ran itself."

Dipper's brown furrowed as the realizations began to stack up. "And that was why you created that… illusion out on the mountains?" he asked. "You wanted to drive her crazy without using the real Shapeshifter, is that it?"

"Exactamundo, and don't think I'll ever use that term again. I'm not ready to bring the "real" Shapeshifter out of prison just yet, Pine Tree, but I will… once the stage is set. And the little tiff between you and Red was all part of that – and a fine chunk of comedy gold, too."

"Then… you made _sure_ we didn't end up killing each other!" Dipper realized aloud. "You wanted us to patch up our friendship, all so you could ruin it all over again by making it look like the Shapeshifter had killed me!"

"And it's worked out spectacularly, don't ya think?" Bill gloated. "As of this morning, Wendy's out of allies, out of family, out of friends, and most importantly, out of _hope._ With you gone, there's nothing to stop her from embracing her true potential: _**MADNESS.**_ She'll be spectacular out there, because as long as she wants to keep on surviving, there's nothing she won't do to stay alive – just for the sake of "spiting" me. But she doesn't get it: I don't care if Red survives or not. I only care how many people she kills before the inevitable finally happens, and I'm betting it's going to be one _hell_ of a body count! Carnage on that scale is going to keep me and the Henchmaniacs entertained for a very, very long time, and if Red's as ruthless as I think she can be… well, who says it ever has to end?"

He spread his arms wide, as if presenting a banner. "Wendy Corduroy the Immortal, Slayer of Innocents and Scion of Destruction!" he proclaimed dramatically. "Bringer of War, first among Bill Cipher's Horsemen of the Apocalypse! Can you imagine it? I mean, we've already got Famine in the works!"

"You _monster,"_ Dipper spat.

"Aw, feeling jealous? Don't be. I didn't arrange all this just to make your girlfriend suffer. I did it for you, too, Pine Tree."

"What, by transforming me into the Shapeshifter? Great plan, Bill, real first-class thinking there. You don't think making me _better at shapeshifting_ might backfire on you at some point?"

"What I can give I can just as easily take away, Pine Tree," Bill sneered. "Besides, I didn't just transform you into the Shapeshifter. You know me better than that: a prank like this was never going to be _that_ simple. I mean, I've still got to bring the "real" Shapeshifter back into play, and I don't think he'd like having an identical twin running around, spoiling his reputation. No, I'm doing something much more important: I'm making you and the Shapeshifter one and the same. I'm making… _**HISTORY."**_

Dipper winced as the echoes died away. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, only my greatest accomplishment. See, my powers have extended into every single facet of reality, Pine Tree: space, matter, interdimensional fields, intrinsic forces, and even time itself – especially now that I've got Time Baby's disintegrated molecules sitting on a shelf in my trophy room. And with those powers, I have everything I need to continue the spread of Weirdmageddon to every corner of the Universe: even as we speak, cultures who've never even heard of Earth are being incorporated into my new empire, and all of them worship me as the ever-living all-powerful deity that I am. But a little while ago, I realized that I'm still not putting my powers to the fullest possible use. See, I've toyed around with time: I've aged children a thousand years, I've made senior citizens into babies, I've trapped entire cities in everlasting entropy like flies in amber, I've made time run at different speeds across my playgrounds, and I've even turned back the clock on death itself. But even with all that, I still haven't embraced the true power of time control: I have it in my power to change the past at will, to alter history-"

"And you weren't worried that you might cause a paradox and destroy your empire before you ever created it?"

"What, as if I was some reality-loving slave-to-temporal-causality loser like _you?_ " Bill cackled derisively. "No, Pine Tree, paradox doesn't dare touch me: I destroy paradox just by thinking about it. The laws of all reality are mine to break, bend and melt as I please. And you know how I know this? **BECAUSE I KILLED HITLER**. Seven times. Nothing changed, because I willed it that way. Yeah, don't thank me for it; I had to shoot Abe Lincoln from behind the grassy knoll and take a flamethrower to Quentin Trembley just to even out my record."

"From the grassy… hang on just one minute-"

"So, my experiment went a little bit like this: what if I could make someone from the present into someone from the past? What if I could temporally connect the existence of one being in the present with another being in the past?"

"You mean-"

"Funny how Ford never found out exactly what laid that egg, huh? Even after all the research he did, he never truly learned what _really_ created the Shapeshifter… but then again, maybe he did – before _**I**_ changed things."

One again, Bill's eyelid curled upwards into the ocular equivalent of a smirk.

"See, you're not just being made into the Shapeshifter – not just genetically. You're being made so that _**you always were the Shapeshifter**_. Always will be, always have been. Under my guidance, your timelines have been permanently connected: your future is his past! His beginning… _**IS YOUR END!"**_

"So… so all that facelessness business, this partial transformation I've undergone, all that was-"

"Just the first side-effects of your assimilation into the Shapeshifter's timeline, aspects of his physical form rippling back into yours!"

"So you lied to me about going faceless."

"That wasn't a line, Pine Tree: you _did_ go faceless, just not when you were expecting it. Remember, I said you _probably_ wouldn't have a face by the time you saw the rest of your family again, not that you _wouldn't_. Sheesh, kid, if you're dumb enough not to notice the specifics, you deserve to get screwed over in these kinds of deals. Besides, I can guarantee your family won't recognize you if you see them again… and believe me, you will: I've got some _very_ juicy appointments lined up for you once I bring you out of cryostasis; I mean, your sister's been making a nuisance of herself in her games, so I had the idea – why don't you show up one chilly evening and eat her parents while I make Shooting Star watch? What if I just have you tear her to pieces and then bring her back to life so you could do it again? Oh, all the punishments for difficult Pines family members I could think of – it's gonna be a hell of a time, Pine Tree!"

In spite of himself, Dipper felt his blood beginning to boil once again. "If you think I'm going to hurt my family just because you tell me to," he began, "You're even crazier than y-"

"Not _just_ because I tell you to," Bill interjected smoothly. "Because you'll _want_ to. You'll be the Shapeshifter in every possible way, right down to personality: everything that was you will be broken down and incorporated into the newborn Shapeshifter... so in a very real sense, Pine Tree, I'm going to kill you.

"But don't worry," he added. "I'll be sure to add just a tiny sprinkle of your mind to the mix. Just imagine it: a teensy-weensy bit of your personality stuck to the Shapeshifter's brain like a barnacle, unable to act, unable to really think for itself, unable to fully remember _what it was,_ but completely aware of everything the Shapeshifter does! Imagine that tiny little atom of your old self hiding at the back of your new self's mind, screaming in despair and not knowing why! Oh, that'll be my mood music, Pine Tree!

"And guess what? _**THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING!**_ The things I can do with time travel, the tortures I can inflict – I mean, you think that turning you into the Shapeshifter is the worst thing I can do? Oh, just imagine what your Grunkles would be like if I extended my rule back into Glass Shard Beach, if they had conflicting memories of a happy childhood in the normal world and memories of growing up in the kingdom of Hell on Earth! You think Pacifica's a mess now, just think of how she'd end up if I'd been reigning on Earth since before she was born – or better still, if I just had her parents carve the empathy centres out of her cute little brains! Even dumb ol' Question Mark could do with a little screwing with: think he'd be as stable as he is today if I made him an orphan? I don't think so! Oh, and your sister… the things I could do to her – _**the things I could make her**_ _ **parents**_ _ **do to her!**_ Just imagine, a parasitic worm here, a strategic possession there, and I could make that happy childhood just VANISH! Tell me, Pine Tree, do you think Shooting Star would be a bit more cooperative if she remembered the abuses she'd endured, or do you think I'd have to get _really_ sadistic? Just how much broken glass do you think would be too sadistic?"

Dipper didn't answer – indeed, he _couldn't_ answer.

"Aw, what's wrong?" Bill teased. "Is it the Shapeshifting thing? I thought this is what you wanted, Pine Tree: you've always wanted to get a chance to explore the deepest mysteries of Gravity Falls, and now you have the answer to a mystery that even your Grunkle Ford couldn't solve! Now, _**you**_ are that mystery!"

For almost a full minute, silence reigned in the cavern, broken only by the muffled hiss of the fire burning down to its last embers.

"Why?" said Dipper. He was crying, now, tears streaming down his face. "Why did you even bother with all this? Why did you tell me I'd get a chance to meet up with the rest of the zodiac? Why did you set me free at all? Why didn't you just remake me into the Shapeshifter right away?"

"Because you still had hope," Bill replied. "Snuffing out your consciousness wouldn't have been as much fun if I'd done it while you still clung to the tiniest atom of hope for the future. You and your family are stubborn types, Pine Tree: simple torture can't break you, and even emotional manipulation has its limits. So I gave you a chance. I gave you a wild-goose-style-chance that nobody in the world could achieve with… and I made sure your hopes shattered as soon as they hit _my_ reality head-on. And now…"

Bill began to laugh. "It's time! Time to say goodbye to Dipper Pines, and say hello to our new friend and playmate… _**THE SHAPESHIFTER!**_ Any last words, Pine Tree?"

Dipper sighed. "Can I at least say goodbye to Mabel?" he asked dully.

"Nope. But thanks for playing. Besides, you'll get to see Shooting Star again… if she ever outlives her entertainment value… but that's a story for another day. WELL, HENCHMANIACS, IT'S TIME TO BID OL' PINE TREE A FOND FAREWELL! LET'S GIVE HIM A COUNTDOWN, SHALL WE? ALTOGETHER, NOW!"

" **10…"** chorused the Henchmaniacs, invisible but somehow omnipresent.

 _So this is it,_ Dipper thought. _This is how I die._

" **9…"**

 _No blaze of glory, no goodbyes, no deathbed, no funeral._

" **8…"**

 _Just…_ this _. Just me becoming someone else and losing everything I used to be._

" **7…"**

 _I… I want to be brave. I've faced down worse things than this! Why can't I be brave! Why can't I stop crying? Oh god, I must look pathetic…_

" **6…"**

 _This isn't fair! It can't end like this, not after everything I've survived! I… I never got to see my parents again! I never got to see Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford again! I never got to see Mabel… and now I never will – not as I am now, anyway._

" **5…"**

 _I thought… for the longest time, I thought we had a chance. I really thought we could have stopped Bill. But we couldn't. Wendy was right: this is his world, and we're all just his playthings._

" **4…"**

 _Was there something I could have done? If I hadn't accepted the apprenticeship, could I have stopped this? If I'd told Mabel, would it have made a difference? Oh, Mabel…_

" **3…"**

… _I'm sorry for everything, Mabel…_

" **2…"**

 _You were the best sister I could possibly have hoped for. I wish could have told you that when I had the chance, but…_

" **1…"**

… _but it's too late, now. Always has been, always will be… too late. I'm so sorry…_

And then, as the grim countdown came to a close, blazing azure light suddenly blossomed from the darkened cave around him, scything through the shadows and embracing Dipper's body with luminescent tendrils of energy – the purest and most unrestrained expression of Bill Cipher's reality-warping power. Dipper cried out in pain as the power enfolded him, searing through every fibre of his being and concluding the metamorphosis that Bill had begun so many months ago. Beams of light erupted from his eyes and poured out of his mouth as the energy saturated his body, pouring through his veins in such quantities that his entire circulatory system glowed in the darkness of the cave.

Dipper was now permeated by raw undiluted time magic, his body flooded with a living mass of time portals opening to let his substance flow backwards. The link had been made, and now the transfer was ready to begin.

A moment later, the light erupted into electric-blue fire that spread across his body, wreathing Dipper from head to toe in luminous flames. And as they spread, they converted…

…and they consumed.

Dipper looked down in terror, realizing that his hands were almost completely transparent. His body was fading away, his physical presence slowly evaporating into nothingness as Bill's power converted the substance of his being into something new and time portals siphoned it away. Even his mind was being swept away, thoughts and dreams and memories and closest friends and dearest relatives vanishing as the flames devoured him alive.

He opened his mouth to scream, but by then, there was nothing left of his voice, so he could only silently howl his fear and pain as the flames swept the last of his being from reality, erasing mind, body and soul all in one final blossoming of flame.

In that moment, Dipper Pines ceased to exist.

Everything about him – in one instant – was reduced to a single pulsating chain of information spiralling backwards through time.

And with that, he was gone.

* * *

Zohl, ru blf orpv nfhrxzo zxxlnkzmrnvmg, "Gsv Vmw Lu Zoo Gsrmth" yb Qvhhrxz Xfiib nrtsg yv z tllw xslrxv uli gsv vmw lu gsrh kiverlfh hvtnvmg - li, ru blf'iv z Dslerzm, "Gsv Oruv Zmw Wvzgs Lu Znb Klmw."

* * *

Some distance away, a scarred figure sat huddled in the ruins of a long-abandoned encampment, muttering fretfully to herself as she stoked the flames of a feeble cooking fire.

"Trust no-one," she whimpered to herself. "Trust no-one, because no-one lives long enough to be trusted. Trust no-one, because no-one lives long enough to be trusted. Trust no-one…"

Wendy was alone, now. Bill Cipher had made sure of that. He'd taken everyone else away: her friends, her family, and her last and dearest companion. Bill had made his pet monster deliver Dipper's bloody cap to her doorstep.

Shivering, she struggled to hold back the tears, even as she glanced down at the two remaining mementoes she'd been able to save: his Journal and his hat.

Dipper was gone, now. She had nothing left to care about and nobody to rely on…

…except herself.

"Trust no-one, because no-one lives long enough to be trusted," she repeated.

Survival was all that mattered; survival was her only means of resistance; survival was all she had left, because it was the only way she could make Bill Cipher as miserable as he'd made her… because one day, she would find others who would listen to her message. She would find the desperate survivors who were still clinging to hope that they could stop Bill; she would find those futile revolutionaries that believe they could somehow win a war against a god; she would find them all, and she would teach them: she would show them that victory was impossible and survival was all that mattered.

"Trust no-one, because no-one lives long enough to be trusted."

In the meantime… there were settlements out there beyond the mountains, all of them with just enough food to sustain her; some were still populated, but Wendy didn't care about robbing from the living any more than she cared about robbing from the dead.

And if no supplies were left…

… well, there were always plenty of corpses.

Licking her lips, Wendy stoked the fires one last time and double-checked the meat spitted over it. To her disappointment, the frost hadn't quite retreated from the flesh, but if nothing else, it proved that it was still edible; no signs of decay, no disease, just a nice plump length of arm and five juicy fingers.

"Trust no-one," she said, "because no-one lives long enough to be trusted."

And as she waited for her feast of human flesh to cook, she began to laugh raucously and entirely without mirth, tears of purest despair trickling down her starved features as the maddened giggling filled the air.

* * *

Over thirty years in the past, an egg shuddered, shifted, before finally cracking open, and a baby shapeshifter crawled out.

The entity that had once been Dipper Pines scanned the area with newborn curiosity, instinctively analysing the world for new forms to adopt, and promptly shapeshifted into Stanford Pines' coffee cup.

* * *

Gsv tznv rh wlmv zmw Wrkkvi olhg  
Hl mld sv wdvooh drgsrm gsv uilhg  
Gsv nlmhgvi droo yv uivv hlnv wzb  
Yfg zh uli Nzhlm, dsl xzm hzb?

* * *

A/N: Up next, a tyrant surveys his kingdom, an interloper seeks help from across time and space, and a challenge (or two) is issued.


	19. Gatecrashing

A/N: And I'm back with another chapter at long last! I'd hoped to get this done by the 6th, but unfortunately medical matters got in the way. Don't worry, I'm okay, but I've been left really annoyed with myself and my revised schedule - more delays, more trips to hospitals and doctor's offices. At times like this, writing and reviews are my solace - and wow, the reviews you furnished me over the last few days were _**incredible.**_

a very angry ravage: Oh, a Gravity Falls/Warhammer crossover would be awesome - I've no idea why it hasn't been considered yet... but then again, I'm the sadaxe who's still grumpy that nobody's arranged a crossover between Gravity Falls and The Secret World.

Kraven the Hunter: I know, I know, I'm cruel. Don't worry, I understand: we need to give the heroes some wins... and this chapter is the start of it - though I will admit that Bill gets the chance to kick the dog again before then. Thank you for your candor, and I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Hourglass Cipher: I'm glad you're impressed with my abilities, but please don't be afraid to take breaks if the depression starts affecting your life outside fanfic. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Ethan: I have haters? Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for your support, but I didn't know I even _had_ haters - very passionate commentators, sure, but not haters.

Promissa Fidel: Thank you so much for your wonderful review - you summarized everything so beautifully! Your support is much appreciated, and I hope this chapter will a) live up to the hype and b) provide some much-needed hope for our heroes.

Brenne: Thanks for the review - hope this chapter continues the excitement.

Blind Eyephone: Yes - I know it might not seem like this, but I'm a strong believer in the Earn Your Happy Ending trope. Also, I loved the fanart. Thank you so, so very much for your wonderful work.

Guest: Thank you for the review; I'm glad you liked the finely-supplied hopelessness, and with any luck, this serves as the turning-of-the-tide (without feeling unearned or too spontaneous). I hope you like the newest chapter!

LoyalTheorist: Do not despair! There is hope on the horizon - small though it may be - and this chapter is the start of it. I'm glad my work's been able to inspire such emotion, and I thank you for your review.

Fanboy-Guest: Don't worry - Gideon and Robbie will be featured very soon. And as for who famine is... well, it's already been mentioned in one of the earlier chapters, but Bill will explain the idea further in this very chapter; I hope you enjoy it.

OMAC001: Well, there is a chance, but it won't be easy...

Northgalus: Once again, do not despair. The turn of the tide is on its way. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I thank you so much for your lovely reviews.

FantasyFan223: Glad I was able to surprise you! You'll get to see how the Shapeshifter situation is resolved in a few chapters, but in the meantime, you'll be pleased to see Axolotl giving himself a good kick for not acting sooner. Hope you enjoy it, and thanks again!

Guest/The Fellow Who Doesn't Sleep: I loved the Game Of Thrones references in your review, and I particularly like your theories as to how the Shapeshifter situation will be dealt with; I hope you enjoy the latest chapter, and thanks so much for your review!

Guest: Don't worry - Gideon will be up very soon.

And without further ado, the latest chapter! Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine, nor is the poem Ozymandias, and neither are all the characters referred to by Axolotl (see if you can guess which Fandoms they belong to for extra fun).

* * *

 **…ZMW LM GSV KVWVHGZO GSVHV DLIWH ZKKVZI:**  
 **NB MZNV RH YROO XRKSVI, TLW LU TLWH!**  
 **OLLP LM NB DLIPH, ZCLOLGO, ZMW WVHKZRI!**

* * *

Looking down at his dominion from the spire of the Fearamid, Bill Cipher would have been hard-pressed to erase the smile from his face – if he'd had lips to smile _with_ , of course.

It was a glorious day to be alive.

Pine Tree – the nerd, the goody-too-shoes, the Boy Scout, the one plaything that had earned total dissolution for his crimes – was gone, soon to join the Henchmaniacs as the newly-freed Shapeshifter.

Red, fittingly enough, had been reduced to a drooling lunatic cruising the roads for anything that could give her the edge she needed to survive; last he'd seen, she was en route to the Drowning Lands, seeking out the Acolytes of the Deep in the hopes of stealing their saltwater sacrament.

And as for the other prisoners, the arcane mechanisms in their playgrounds had recorded every minute of their suffering; as such, Bill had months of happy watching to catch up on..

Best of all, his kingdom, his _empire_ now spanned roughly half the known universe: one by one, the galaxies of this dimension had succumbed to Weirdness, and every single planet touched by his powers had surrendered after less than a day of enduring the madness he brought.

And of course, their palaces and halls of government were now the bricks of his ever-expanding Fearamid – just as their monarchs and governors were now the mortar between those bricks.

Those conquered peoples were now his subjects, his playthings, his guests at a party that had grown to encompass billions upon billions of helpless worlds. At his command, they performed, they danced, they sang, they tortured one another, they sacrificed their firstborn to him, they killed one another in genocidal conflicts, and they wept in despair as they realized that even death wouldn't be enough to free them from servitude. Most importantly, they worshipped him as their patron god, redeemer, reaper and devil combined, as well they should: he had brought a judgement that lesser deities could only dream of, and ushered in a reign of nightmares that made the crimes of other chthonic monsters pale by comparison.

Who else but a god could have transformed planets into donuts and made skies swap places with oceans? Who else but a devil could have imprisoned entire populations within their own nightmares for millennia on end – without ever allowing a single second to pass? Who else but the very spirit of death would have made entire constellations go cold and dark at his approach? Who else but a messiah could have liberated the universe from every single natural law that once enslaved it? Was it not fitting, then, that so many proclaimed him their Eternal Master, Bringer of the Sacred Plague of Weirdness?

Only a few populated galaxies remained untouched by his divine pandemic, and many of those had already seen the chaos on the horizon; before the first tendrils of Weirdness could even touch them, those prescient civilizations had either fled in terror or nuked their own cities in the hope of escaping his rule. Neither approach worked: the Weirdness always caught up with the refugees, and as for the suicides, Bill just brought them back from the grave and forced them into his service.

Any of his subjects who resisted the call to worship – or _tried_ to – were immediately obliterated, either by Bill, his Henchmaniacs or by the latest shipment of Rust Thralls cooked up by Old Man McGucket.

Oh yes, McGucket – now officially known as the Ruinous Toymaker. That was another thing to celebrate: ever since he'd been remade, McGucket had been transformed into the perfect instrument of the new regime. True, he was far too passive to be a _real_ Henchmaniac, much less join the parties Bill tossed, but he was more than diligent enough to do the work that the others couldn't be bothered with. Yes sir, the Toymaker had outdone himself in the creation of the Rust Thralls, and judging by the screams echoing from his workshop, his inventiveness wasn't letting up anytime soon.

That same creativity had been put to good use in designing the entertainment for Bill's latest party. After all, the downfall of the zodiac deserved a celebration like no other; plus, after so many renovations, expansions and improvements, the Fearamid also deserved a housewarming party.

In any event, Bill had games planned for the evening that would make it into the history books. And yet, this was still only the beginning: even after everything he'd done, there were yet more worlds to conquer. Once those last remaining systems fell, the realms of mythology awaited him!

Heaven and Hell, Elysium and Tartarus, Aaru and Duat, Valhalla and Niflheim, Tian and Diyu, Tlalocan and Xibalba; all the manifold afterlives and netherworlds and spirit realms that mortals hinged their faith upon would be his to explore, conquer, destroy and remake in his image. And even if they existed only in the minds of the believers, he would _make_ them real _just so he could dominate them_. For the few silent rebels who still prayed to their native gods, there would be no escape: he would drag their defeated messiahs before them and watch as their hopes shattered, as they finally realized that salvation was _**dead.**_

And once that was done…

Somewhere downstairs, music was playing: big band jazz rippling up and down the corridors of the Fearamid, Pyronica belting out the lyrics to "After You Get What You Want."

Bill chuckled. He could think about future wars later: after all, the multiverse wasn't going anywhere, not while Bill still had an eternity or two to _really_ stretch his metaphysical muscles. In the meantime, it was time for the festivities to begin.

Brushing imaginary dust off his top hat and straightening his bow tie, he began the slow descent from the tip of the Fearamid to the throne room fifty thousand stories below.

"Party time," he giggled to himself, as the world unfolded beneath him.

Oh yes, it was a glorious time to be alive!

* * *

"Axolotl? Oh Axolotl? Can you hear me in there? I can see those jellied little eyeballs beginning to glow again under your host's eyelashes, so you're obviously on the way to regaining consciousness. Of course, it's difficult tell just how far along you've progressed, given that you're currently inhabiting the single most chipmunk-like human being on this tormented ball of pus and vomit, but them's the breaks. So, if you can hear my voice, please open your host's eyelids. If not, I may have to resort to large and unpleasant syringes."

Somewhere in the depths of Tyler Cutebiker's brain, Axolotl stirred, shivered, and finally awoke.

Forcing one eyelid open, he looked out at the world through aching, bloodshot eyes, and immediately found himself gazing up at the smiling face of Nyarlathotep – still in the form of Mr Carter, still backdropped by the ruined Earth.

"Good," the Outer God purred. "You're conscious. The syringes can go home unfulfilled."

Axolotl groaned, partly out of exhaustion but mostly out of sheer exasperation. "How long were Tyler and I unconscious?" he asked.

"Approximately a week and a half of nonlinear time. It took me a little while to call for advice and patch you up; in the meantime, unfortunately, the temporal activity that caught your attention has… spread."

Suddenly wide awake, Tyler's body sat bolt upright, every single nerve ending alight with eldritch energies. "It did _what?!_ " Axolotl shouted.

"Oh, don't act so surprised. You were worried that something like this might happen, weren't you?"

"Naturally. That's why I tried to stop that pulse of Weirdness from rippling backwards through time, but… well, even if the exertion hadn't almost killed Tyler and nearly wiped my existence from the cosmos, I doubt Bill would have given up after just one attempt." Axolotl sighed deeply. "So tell me, what's he done?"

"Take a look for yourself: by now, the action's all over and done with, but you can still see Bill's dirty fingerprints all over history. He's been fiddling around with the past for his own amusement for some little time, apparently for nothing more than his own amusement, but he's already put it to a disturbingly practical use."

"What do you mean?"

"We appear to have lost one of the zodiac."

The transition was astonishingly swift: one moment, Tyler's body was lying flat on its back; the next second, it had quite literally achieved lift-off. Hovering five feet off the ground, Axolotl scrutinized the distant shape of what was once planet Earth, searching for the members of the zodiac amidst the pocket realities that comprised Bill's playground. One by one, he located them: some had been driven mad or worse, some were suffering incomparably, some of them were still resisting, and a few had actually managed to escape. Before his multifaceted vision, they were all accounted for – all except one.

Dipper was nowhere to be seen.

In his place, a trail of Weirdness trickled backwards through time, and into a new existence altogether. It took perhaps five seconds for Axolotl to recognize where Dipper's new life had led him, and by then, he was fuming.

"I swear," he hissed, "Just when you think Bill's reached the absolute nadir and there's no way he can possibly sink any lower, the bastard finds new depths of depravity to plumb."

"One would think you'd be able to predict such things," said Nyarlathotep. There was a touch of mockery in his voice now, a touch of venom that even Axolotl couldn't help but recoil from. "After all, you know him better than most: you _knew_ the lengths he would go to just to ensure his fun."

Axolotl muttered a vowel-less expletive normally impossible for the human larynx to replicate. "Pointless conceit on my part," he admitted. "If I _really_ knew him, Bill would be dead and Gravity Falls would have been saved by now. Always the same mistake on my part: hubris and half-measures! Because I presumed to understand his thoughts without even dreaming of the worst-case scenario, this world has been damaged beyond repair, and my attempts at fixing things from behind the scenes have _**not been enough!**_ So far, only two of the prisoners have been freed and barely a handful are in a position to stage jailbreaks of their own. As for the others, Fiddleford is now Bill's creature, Robbie's been blinded, Stanford's in danger of becoming a Henchmaniac, Wendy's been driven mad, and Dipper is gone – perhaps forever!"

If Nyarlathotep had anything to say in response to the tirade, he gave no sign of it. By this time, he had conjured a large bag of popcorn from nowhere and was now gleefully stuffing his face, scarcely bothering to hide his smirk as he did so.

Axolotl, meanwhile, was still ranting. "And because I failed to imagine that Bill might do something this insane," he continued. "Because I took too long to act decisively, he's had every opportunity to wreak untold havoc on the past, the _one thing_ he hadn't been able to corrupt up until now! And the damage it's already done to what's left of this dimension's barriers and defences! Beforehand, we might have just had a few incursions from other realities, but now…"

Nyarlathotep grinned wickedly. "In other words, our cycloptic friend has opened Pandora's Box for business and the beautiful ignorant bastard doesn't even know it."

"You _could_ be a little less enthusiastic about this, you know. In case you hadn't noticed, someone who was counting on me for rescue has – for all intents and purposes – just _died!"_

"And yet his suffering lingers on," said the Outer God, his smirk growing. "So, it rather begs the question: what are you going to do about it, Mr Mayor? Are you going to sit here brooding over past mistakes while Bill's Weirdness contaminates every aspect of this misbegotten dimension… or are you going to do something about it? I await your response with baited breath – well, I would if I _needed_ to breathe, but that's beside the point."

Axolotl thought for a moment.

"There's not much I _can_ do," he said despairingly. "Bill knows I'm after him; he's known that ever since he first escaped. The only reason I managed to break in was because he hadn't counted on me finding a willing host, and now that I'm here, I can barely use my powers. I thought I'd be able to gather the zodiac under Bill's nose; that he'd be too distracted by Dipper and Wendy to notice the jailbreaks… but I moved too slowly. As soon as he gets around to taking a good look at his playground, he'll notice the missing prisoners and the whole thing will go up in smoke. Worse still, now he's got the perfect means of counteracting rebellions: he's mastered time travel, and he's crazy enough to use it regardless of the consequences. If I try to spring anyone else from captivity, Bill can just rewind time and undo it – and in doing so, the stupid bastard will unknowingly let in all manner of monsters from beyond the tattered veil."

Axolotl paused, realization slowly dawning on Tyler's chipmunk-like features.

"I can't afford to be subtle anymore," he said at last. "And I can't afford to micromanage this, either. If there's any chance of victory, it'll have to be achieved by the prisoners."

"You want them to form the Circle again after all?"

"No, no. The members of the zodiac have changed too much for the ritual to work, even if I _could_ reunite them. No, I'm going to have to try something more radical: we need to make use of the blessings and curses Bill bestowed on the zodiac. I need to turn Bill's own instruments of torture against him."

"There's a lot of variables there, Axolotl," warned Nyarlathotep. "Assuming the zodiac ever become powerful enough to tackle Bill _and_ resist his attempts at rewinding time-"

"- _One_ of them might be able to do just that-"

"Then how do you propose to stop Bill from simply depowering every plaything that rebels against him?"

"I don't," said Axolotl simply. "With luck, I won't need to. The true nature of Weirdness lies in chaos, distortion, entropy, in warping individuals and objects beyond their natural state: it can create, destroy, resurrect, manipulate, mutate, transmogrify and transmute, but it can't restore _normality._ And over time, chaos asserts itself over order, even in the case of someone like Bill: the longer his playthings retain the powers he forced on them, the more they develop beyond his control."

"So it's as I said: "things develop beyond even the great Bill Cipher's control." But you still have to make sure they stay out of his reach until they develop that far… and for that, you need my help, don't you?"

Axolotl nodded sadly.

"I knew it," Nyarlathotep chuckled. "So, what do you wish of me? Who do you want hidden? Where do you want my powers directed?"

"Wait, you're not going to ask for anything in return?"

"What could I possibly ask for? I've already gotten one infinite-potential wish out of you. Asking for a second would just be gauche, especially considering your life isn't on the line at present. Besides, you forget: I'm in this for _entertainment_ just as much as personal profit. If I don't cooperate, Bill wins and the entire scenario instantly becomes as boring and predictable as the average reality TV show. No, I think I'm more than satisfied with what I already have. So tell me, what do you need?"

 _You're lying. I know there's no logical evidence of you lying anywhere in the vicinity, but something tells me you're lying – or you're setting the stage for your next con. Either way, this can't end well: for all I know, you'll bug out in mid-request and leave Mabel and Stanford hanging, or worse… but at this point, I don't have much choice._

Axolotl took a deep breath, filling Tyler's lungs to full capacity. "I'm going to need you to hide the members of the zodiac who've already escaped. You'll have to make absolutely certain that the ones that are still imprisoned receive all the guidance they need – especially Mabel. When you're not doing that, I need you to play messenger."

"No problem there," said Nyarlathotep. "I was meant to serve as an emissary, after all. Who do you want me to contact?"

"Anyone capable of stopping Bill from escaping this reality if he tries to expand his reach. We need _serious_ reality-warping firepower: Elizabeth, the Starchild, Coin, Einstein – the _Ancient_ , not the 20th century scientist – Rehab Alma, Q, Joey Harker, Jessica Sorrow, the Purified Moon of Endiness, Emma Smith, Dr Manhattan, John Murdoch, the Ellimist, Judah Low, Minus, and… uh…" Axolotl floundered for a moment. "The _Other_ Weaver might agree to the job if you appeal to him as a fellow trickster; see if you can find some sympathetic Mages from the World of Darkness; Rick Sanchez could be encouraged to help out if you suggested that Bill might threaten Morty at some point; hell, even those self-pitying twits from Brakebills might be skilled enough if you catch them in the right point in their timeline… oh, and the Doctor. _Definitely_ get the Doctor – all fourteen of them, for choice."

"Then you're getting serious about this. Good."

"One, one more thing: before then…"

He hesitated, and took an even deeper breath just for good measure. It wasn't fair to endanger Tyler's life so soon after the last near-fatal mistake, and he wasn't much looking forward to risking his own immortal existence in what might just be the chanciest gambit in this dimension's history. But by this stage, risk was unavoidable: he couldn't afford to remain in the shadows any longer, not if the surviving members of the zodiac were to be kept safe; Bill needed to be distracted… and at this point, there was only one thing that would get his attention.

"I need you to help me sneak in and out of the Fearamid," Axolotl said at last. "It's time I showed my hand…"

* * *

Not long ago, Bill had thought that his throne room had seemed a little bit on the plain side apart from the neighbourhood-spanning stained glass window and the gargantuan base of his throne. But in the months since then, he'd spruced up the place, filled in the empty spaces and added some fresh new artworks to the seat of his universe-spanning empire.

Now, the place was alive with arcane gadgetry, a veritable metropolis of specially-designed toys to entertain the Henchmaniacs: blackjack tables, craps games, roulette wheels, slot machines, pool tables, electric chairs, suffocation chambers, drowning buckets, guillotines, long-drop gallows, iron maidens, Judas chairs, brazen bulls, and a whole host of miniature arenas in which Bill's subjects could duel one another to the death for the amusement of the watching crowds – along with several stadium-sized viewing screens for more remote events. None of these toys had been used before: tonight would be the gala opening for this newest hive of festivity and bloodshed, and every single wager would be paid with the only currency that mattered: slaves.

For now, though, the Henchmaniacs and Rust Thralls were all focussed on Bill – and the imposing curtained shape just below his throne. The other members of crowd (all five hundred thousand of them) could only stare in terror at the sight of their lord and master, waiting in dread for the newest torture to be announced.

Bill leaned back on his throne, relishing the feel of human flesh writhing in pain beneath his fingertips. With thrones of petrified suffering now decidedly out of fashion and couches of human skin being beyond passé, he'd fused the surrendering world leaders into a colossal throne of fused tissue, their beings intermingling into a monolithic sculpture of comingled flesh, bone and brain matter, forever conscious, always in agony.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, BOYS AND GIRLS, MONSTERS OF ALL DESCRIPTIONS!" he boomed. "WELCOME TO THE _**NEW AND IMPROVED FEARAMID,**_ NOW INCORPORATING OVER FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND PALACES CAPTURED FROM AROUND THE UNIVERSE – ALL OF THEM DOMINATED AND CLAIMED BY _**ME!**_ LET'S GIVE IT UP FOR THE UNDISPUTED CONQUERER OF THE COSMOS!"

The Henchmaniacs cheered raucously; the Toymaker's creations, too lobotomized to understand enthusiasm, offered polite metallic applause; and as for the mortals, they could only kneel in terror, faces pressed hard into the stone floor in a cowering abasement.

"That's what I like to hear! Now, to celebrate the newest round of conquests, damnations and destructions, I've arranged a special treat for us all. You saw how I dealt with Ol' Pine Tree, and you all heard what I had planned for the little pipsqueak's family – through _**TIME TRAVEL!"**_

Once again, the Henchmaniacs screamed their approval at supersonic volume, sending a few hundred guests collapsing to their knees with hands pressed tightly against their blood-streaked ears.

"See, I think it's time we tried something a little different: last few months, you've all been hard at work obliterating the weak in other galaxies and only ever getting a chance to spectate on the action. Well, _**IT'S TIME YOU GOT**_ _ **IN**_ _ **ON THE FUN!**_ Time travel is going to be the best sport we've had since we introduced white phosphorous to daycare centres, and we're all going to get a chance to make the mortal rebels suffer like never before!"

He waved a hand: at the base of his throne, the curtained shape abruptly shifted, and the veil covering it fell away; beneath it was a brightly-coloured upright wheel, of the kind that would have ended up on a gameshow in the days before Weirdmageddon. Made of solid gold, bordered with flickering red-and-purple neon, studded with lightbulbs and equipped with a ruby-tipped starting lever, it was probably the chintziest thing in the entire Fearamid. Of course, this being Bill's domain, every space on the wheel was emblazoned with a particularly grisly incident from an alternate past: traumatic bullying, parental abuse, poisoning, disfiguration, a death in the family, drug addiction, madness, isolation, imprisonment, nuclear war, all events that could now be added to the personal timeline of every single prisoner in Bill's care.

And above the wheel, a tiny sign hovered, indicating the name of the game's current plaything – in this case, Mabel Pines.

"IT'S SPIN THE WHEEL TIME, BOYS AND GIRLS!" Bill shrieked, louder than ever. " _YOU_ GET TO DECIDE HOW WE ALTER THE PAST! _YOU_ GET TO DECIDE HOW WE TORTURE THE PRISONERS! SPIN THE WHEEL AND TAKE YOUR PRIZE, OR SACRIFICE SLAVES FOR ANOTHER CHANCE TO BREAK THE VICTIM'S SPIRIT! NOW, WE'VE ALREADY GOT OUR FIRST TARGET LOCKED IN, SO… WHO WANTS TO GO FIRST? WHO WANTS TO SEE HOW FAR THE SHOOTING STAR CAN FALL?"

Immediately, there was a storm of hands frantically thrust in the air as each one of the Henchmaniacs waved and jumped for Bill's attention – a few of them accidentally crushing a score or two of mortal audience members.

"Alright then… eenie, meenie, minee – _you!_ **PYRONICA!** GET ON UP HERE FOR THE FIRST SPIN OF THE WHEEL!"

Cackling triumphantly, the fiery-limbed demoness took centre stage by the wheel to the accompaniment of jealous roars and catcalls from the other Henchmaniacs. One yank of the lever later, and the wheel roared to life with the sound of a million tortured souls heated to the point of ignition: a plethora of horrific incidents blurred across its surface, each one more horrific than the last, every imaginable trauma and death imaginable fading in and out of view as the entries blurred by. After perhaps fifteen seconds, the wheel finally ground to a halt, leaving the needle stopped right above the entry marked DEATH OF DIPPER – PUPPET SHOW.

"IT'S THE BIPPER INCIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" Bill whooped, somehow still making himself heard over the thunderous cheers of the Henchmaniacs. "LET'S SEE HOW SHOOTING STAR REMEMBERS IT ONCE WE'RE DONE! _**LET'S PUT HISTORY IN A BLENDER!**_ "

In response, two massive viewscreens on either side of Bill sprung to life.

One showed Mabel as she was in the present: still cloistered in her royal bedchamber in Mabeland, clearly struggling to think of some escape attempt in spite of all the torment that had been inflicted on her, and (amusingly enough) doing everything she could to ignore the boxes of sock-puppets.

The other showed the past – more specifically, Mabel's puppet show. For the first few minutes, everything played out exactly as it had happened: Bipper volunteered for the role of reverend, the first act began in earnest, Bipper searched for the journal, and Dipper's disembodied soul started looking for a vessel. Eventually, Dipper found his sock-puppet self.

And then, history changed.

Suddenly, Bill vanished from the present and reappeared in the past – fully incarnated on Earth. With a single wave of his hand, he evicted Dipper's soul from the sock puppet and dragged him all the way to the South Pole, leaving him effectively unable to reach the theatre before it was too late. With nobody there to warn past-Mabel of past-Bill's plans, the puppet show ended on the happy note she'd wanted, and Bipper was able to claim and incinerate the journal without anyone noticing… and with his mission accomplished, past-Bill had no further use for his current meat puppet.

The authorities found Dipper's life body crumpled at the foot of the water tower a good five hours after his death. With no evidence to the contrary, the incident was ruled a suicide, and unfriendly observers started to wonder just what was going on in the Mystery Shack. It wasn't long before Mabel was eventually removed from Grunkle Stan's custody, and by then, she'd already seen and heard all the horrific details of her brother's death.

Not realizing that Bill was responsible, Mabel descended into a long-period of grief-stricken mourning that only grew worse when her parents arrived to take her home; needless to say, they never allowed her anywhere near Gravity Falls or Grunkle Stan ever again. Without Dipper, Mabel was left alone in the world without anyone she could relate to, and every friend she met from then on only reminded her of how empty life felt; but it wasn't until almost two weeks after the funeral, when she found herself unable to speak to Gabe (even via email) without feeling disgusted with herself, that she finally realized that Dipper's death was all her fault. He'd killed himself because of _her,_ she realized; she'd made him miserable, she'd ignored what _he'd_ wanted, she'd made him feel like a freak for caring about different things, she'd made him feel _alone in the world_ – just like she felt without him.

Lost, isolated, crushed by despair, Mabel retreated into herself, trying to take refuge in fantasies that only seemed more hollow now that Dipper wasn't there to share in them. And when the portal opened and Weirdmageddon erupted across the world, she almost considered it a relief…

All of this happened in the past, clearly visible on the left-hand screen as the alterations to history slowly rippled out across the space-time continuum.

And back in the present, Mabel suddenly remembered what had happened. Almost inaudibly, she let out a murmur of "but that didn't happen." Slowly, her breathing began to quicken in pace, faster and faster until she was all but hyperventilating; her fingers curved into claws, gripping the back of the chair as she struggled to cope with the influx of wildly-contradicting memories; and as the pain of cognitive distortion rippled out across her nervous system, her voice rose from a whimper to a scream, her words dissolving into a long drawn-out howl of agony. Hands flying to her head as if to hold back the intense pressure bubbling inside her skull, she lost her grip on the chair and crashed sideways to the floor in a twitching, shivering, vomiting heap.

"That didn't happen!" she screamed, once she had recovered her voice. "That didn't happen! That didn't happen! _That didn't happen!"_

Bill laughed. "LOOK AT HER GO, FOLKS! SHE'S GOT TWO SETS OF MEMORIES, NOW, AND SHE CAN'T TELL WHAT'S REAL OR NOT! THE MORE SHE STRUGGLES AGAINST THE NEW MEMORY, THE MORE REAL IT BECOMES! THE MORE SHE TRIES TO DENY IT, THE MORE IT FEELS LIKE IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED!"

Back in her room, Mabel had gathered herself into a foetal ball on the carpet, and was now hugging herself in a desperate and futile attempt to assuage the madness that threatened to overtake her. "Itdidnthappenitdidnthappenitdidnthappen," she gibbered pathetically, voice reduced to a barely-comprehensible stream of noise. "It didn't happen, it didn't happen, it… it didn't… it…"

There was a dreadful silence, and Mabel began to sob. "But it did," she tearfully admitted. "It did. Oh god, it's all my fault, it's…"

The rest was drowned out by the mocking laughter of the Henchmaniacs.

"YOU SEE?!" Bill roared triumphantly. "WE CAN ALTER THE PAST IN A THOUSAND DIFFERENT WAYS, AND IT'LL NEVER AFFECT THE PRESENT UNLESS _**I WANT IT TO.**_ WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE LIKE TO THEM IN THE PAST, AND THEY'LL HAVE TO LIVE WITH THE MEMORIES OF IT… AND, IF WE FEEL LIKE IT, THE INJURIES! AND THAT IS HOW WE BREAK 'EM FOR GOOD!"

He paused, briefly allowing the video feed on the screens to fade out before he continued. "See, I've got something special planned for Mabel, ladies and gentlemen. I've got something special planned for quite a few of our prisoners, believe it or not. See, Preston Northwest was a total dumbass, but even he had a few good ideas now and again: does anyone remember his idea for my own personal Horsemen of the Apocalypse?"

The Henchmaniacs laughed obligingly, each one remembering the sight of the fallen plutocrat writhing around on the ground as he struggled to cope with his new face.

"Yeah, I've been auditioning this idea for a little while: I wanted to have old Preston as Pestilence, but he didn't have the stones for the spot, so I've made do with better candidates. Long story short, we've got a lot of worlds still to conquer, and I think it's time someone else led the charge while we sit back and have some fun… and who would be better suited to the role than those who tried to _**END OUR FUN?!**_

He waved a hand, and once again the viewscreens sprang to life, this time depicting figures that did not exist – _yet:_ a quartet of four familiar figures, each one seated on a monstrous ten-legged steed with the eyes of a spider, each one armed with weapons that would have seemed eldritch to human eyes… and each one a former member of the zodiac.

"Behold my vision of the future, boys and girls!" Bill thundered from on high. "The most corruptible of the zodiac, remade into our emissaries: BILL CIPHER'S HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, coming to a galaxy near you!"

"Starring, in order of appearance: Mabel Pines in the role of PESTILENCE!"

"Wendy Corduroy as WAR!"

"Pacifica Northwest as FAMINE!"

"And last but not least, Stanford Pines: I looked and behold a pale horse, and the name that sat on him was DEATH… AND _**HELL FOLLOWED WITH HIM!"**_

The crowd obediently applauded.

"But this vision won't come true without help, boys and girls! It'll only happen if you completely break our prisoners – and for that, you need to spin the wheel… and see how well you can exploit the results! Pyronica, you're out of spins for the time being: do you want to sacrifice a slave or six hundred for another spin of the wheel, or are you up for some direct headgames with Shooting Star?"

"I'll take the headgames!" Pyronica cackled. "I've already skinned her bother – might as well do the same with the little brat's brain!"

"That's what I like to hear! Now, get out there and MAKE HER SUFFER LIKE NEVER BEFORE!"

As Pyronica vanished, Bill turned to the rest of the crowd, his eye once again crinkled into its familiar oracular smirk. "The fun ain't over yet, folks! It's time for more time torture! Now, who's next on the-"

Bill's next words were lost in the explosion that shook the Fearamid in that moment: a massive, coruscating eruption of arcane power burst from the floor less than twenty feet from Bill's throne, blasting the wheel into gaudy shrapnel and sending a shockwave rippling across the throne room; in its path, the assembled guests either fled or toppled like ninepins and elaborate gaming machines exploded, melted, collapsed in on themselves, or simply disintegrated.

Bill himself was knocked clean off his throne and sent crashing into the opposite wall, where he remained for a time, gently bouncing back and forth against the brickwork like a lost helium balloon. By the time he'd recovered his equilibrium and returned to his seat, the smoke was already beginning to clear, the felled Henchmaniacs were hauling themselves to their feet, and the mortal audience members had finally been shooed out of their hiding places beneath the collapsed gaming machines.

"What the hell was that?" Bill demanded.

There was a long and distinctly terrified pause.

"WELL? Answer me! If that was supposed to be a joke, boys and girls, then I hate to tell you, but I'm not laughing. Whoever did that – you've just wrecked the best casino this reality's ever-"

There was a horrified gasp from the audience: suddenly everyone was pointing at the wall directly to the left of Bill's throne; following their astonished stares, Bill realized that at some point in the last few minutes since the explosion, words had been carved into the stygian stonework – an entire paragraph of mystic runes glowing with unearthly light. Nobody could fail to miss this act of cosmic vandalism…

…but only Bill could understand the meaning of the mystic graffiti.

For a moment, Bill could only gape in disbelief as the meaning of the words slid icily into place. Then, he scanned the throne room, looking for the telltale energy signature that was the only sign that his pursuer left in its wake: sure enough, the area around the throne itself was _inundated_ with the Axolotl's space-time residue, all of it condensing into a path leading out of the Fearamid and into the furthest outskirts of his empire.

"He was here," Bill whispered. _"He was here."_

There was a rumble of confusion from the audience.

"He was here and I didn't even notice it! After everything I did to keep him out, he's _here_ in this dimension, infiltrating _my_ Fearamid, AND HE'S RUINING **_MY_** **_FUCKING HOUSEWARMING PARTY!_** "!"

The Henchmaniacs could only stare up at their master in uncomprehending silence: seeing Bill surprised wasn't that much of a shock anymore, following the final battle in Gravity Falls, but this was the first time they'd seen him genuinely _scared._

"Am I talking to a brick wall!?" Bill screamed. "HE'S _**HERE!**_ THE AXOLOTL IS LOOSE IN THIS DIMENSION, AND ALL YOU CAN DO IS SIT THERE STARING AT ME? WHAT IS _WRONG_ WITH YOU IDIOTS? _**DO SOMETHING!"**_

8-Ball politely coughed for attention. "Uh, Boss?" he called out. "Is this part of the party, or something? Because I don't get the joke, whatever it is."

"YOU F-" Bill paused mid-expletive, and very slowly closed his eye. "Right," he sighed, gently massaging his eyeball with his fingers. "You don't remember what happened the last time; almost slipped my mind…"

" _What_ happened last time?"

"Shut up, 8-Ball."

"Shutting up, boss."

Bill took a deep breath, trying and failing to suppress the fear still bubbling at the back of his mind.

"Right," he said. "Long story short: party's over. We've got a do-gooder from another reality sniffing around here, and he wants to end the fun for good. The games are officially postponed until we can find the Axolotl and kill him before he finishes whatever the giant salamander has in mind."

"But who's the Axo-"

"DON'T ASK QUESTIONS, JUST _**DO IT!"**_ Bill screamed. "FIND AXOLOTL AND DO IT QUICKLY OR YOU'LL BE NEXT ON THE TORTURE SCHEDULE! IF IT HELPS ME CROWBAR THE MESSAGE INTO YOUR CRANIUMS, KNOW THIS: **EVERYTHING WE'VE BUILT HERE IS AT STAKE**. UNLESS YOU WANT TO SPEND THE NEXT FEW ETERNITIES INSIDE-OUT IN A SALT MINE, THEN FIND THE INTRUDER AND DESTROY HIM! DO **NOT** COME BACK EMPTY HANDED, BECAUSE _**I WILL NOT BE HAPPY!**_ _ **NOW MOVE!"**_

In perfect unison, the Henchmaniacs scattered in all directions, running, scuttling, flying or teleporting away in search of the dreaded Axolotl. Most of the Rust Thralls followed, leaving the throne room empty except for Bill and the few human audience members who hadn't fled the moment he'd started shouting.

And in the silence that followed, Bill began to whisper furiously to himself. "It's not going to end the way it did the last time," he hissed. "If Self-Loathing did his job, Stanley'll be dead by now. He can't stop me. The memory gun can't stop me. And Axolotl isn't going to get one over on me again, that's for sure… not if I find him. Ah but… oh, the last time I trusted those idiots to get anything done, Pine Tree got away before Teeth could even take a bite out of him. If you want something done… it won't happen the same way this time…"

And with that, Bill vanished, following the trail of energy off into the outskirts of his dominion.

And in his wake, Axolotl's message remained graffitied on the Fearamid wall for all to see:

 **LMXV BLF WZIVW GL XZOO NB MZNV** **  
** **RG DZH VRGSVI GSZG LI VMW RM UOZNV** **  
** **DV NZWV Z YZITZRM LM GSZG WZB** **  
** **ZMW BLF ZTIVVW GL XSZMTV BLFI DZBH** **  
** **BLF YILPV BLFI XSZRMH ZMW YILPV LFI WVZO** **  
** **ULI LMV OZHG XSZMXV GL HKRM GSV DSVVO** **  
** **BLF GFIMVW YZXP GRNV ZMW DLM GSV DZI** **  
** **GSILFTS HVXIVGH OVZIMVW RM WZBH YVULIV** **  
** **HL MLD BLF GSRMP GSV HGIFTTOV'H WLMV** **  
** **ZMW BLF XZM SZEV HLNV SZIW-VZIMVW UFM** **  
** **YFG ZOO GLL JFRXPOB BLF ULITVG** **  
** **GSZG GSRH GRNV BLF XZM'G KZB GSV WVYG** **  
** **BLF SZW GDL XSZMXVH, ZMW BLF VIIVW** **  
** **ZMW MLD BLF DROO MLG TVG Z GSRIW**

* * *

A/N: Up next - paths converge, a utopia welcomes new visitors, and Pyronica moves in for the kill!


	20. Time And Blood

A/N: *gasp* Aaaaargh I'm alive. Don't ask me how, but I somehow got through the month without dying of exhaustion. And I somehow got the chapter done... but not without great cost. This chapter has regrettably been chainsawed in half for the sake of pacing and brevity.

No, really. Please stop laughing.

In the meantime, I'm immensely grateful for all my viewers, reviewers, favouriters and followers.

Guest, don't worry: Gideon and Robbie will be back soon - maybe in a chapter or two.

LoyalTheorist - I can assure you, things are going to get better for Mabel this chapter (though I had to cut out the hugs this round) and they're going to be even better _next_ chapter.

Lizzie2145 - Yep; kid gloves are off, brass knuckles are on, as they say... and Axolotl's going to need 'em.

Hourglass Cipher - Well, without saying too much, two of the horsemen make an appearance this chapter and both play a very big role. Gideon, Stan, Ford and the others make their next appearances in a couple of chapters.

Fantasy Fan 223 - Oh, I loved your review! Your interpretation of events was sterling - although I have to acknowledge the fact that Bill's code was referencing the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Also, good news: Pyronica's kill is purely metaphorical - but no less devastating, unfortunately. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this chapter. Thanks again.

Kraven the Hunter - I know, I know, I'm horrible. In my defence, pacing is always against me; I wanted to include a bigger win last chapter, but I had to pace myself. This round, I've had to cut the Hell Yes moment and move it to next chapter, so what we have instead are little victories interspersed with depression and doubt. But don't worry: the victories get bigger over time - from now on, the tide has very firmly turned. Zmw ru rg svokh, gsrh xszkgvi'h zggvnkg zg gligfiv rh jfrgv mvzgob wvizrovw.

HufflepuffPosidens Divergent - All of them!

Blind Eyephone - Don't worry; they'll get happier, bit by bit, I assure you.

Northgalus - Don't forget the _real_ (meaning historical) Dipper locked away as the shapeshifter!

OMAC001 - Not as bad as Bill, but definitely just as weird.

Brenne - Bill isn't going to find out just yet, not while he's out hunting Axolotl; rest assured, Ford will awake soon... and as for Mabel, we learn her fate in this chapter!

Guest - Oh believe me, Nyarlathotep is playing his own angle... but it remains to be seen what that angle is.

Skywalkerchick1138 - Thanks so much for your kind review, and I'm glad you like the story so far. Good job on recognizing the crossovers so far - and Joey Harker is uiln gsv mlevo Rmgvidliow yb Mvro Tzrnzm. In the meantime, Dipper and Mabel's parents will be making an appearance in the not-too-distant future... in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this chapter - and I promise that Mabel's lot will slowly be improving.

Fanboy-Guest - More accurately, Bill had a chance to walk away and abandon his plan for Weirdmageddon; after that, he had a chance to abide by the Axolotl's rules and earn a new life in a new world; now... all bets are off.

Xavier Rall - I'm glad I was able to surprise you.

Anyway, without further ado, the newest chapter! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine, Zmw mvrgsvi rh Eznkriv Gsv Nzhjfvizwv.

* * *

 **YROO NRTSG LMXV SZEV DLM GSV WZB**  
 **YFG MLG ZOO GSRMTH DROO TL SRH DZB**  
 **SRH GLBH NZB BVG VNYIZXV GSV HGIZMTV**  
 **YVBLMW XLMGILO, GSVB TILD ZMW XSZMTV**

* * *

Once upon a time, Pacifica had barely been able to imagine the full extent of the power that would be at her fingertips once she was granted full access to the Northwest throne.

Less than a few weeks ago, the handful of barbs in her back and the few morsels of magical talent she'd been afforded as a result hadn't prepared her for the reality of the situation – and with good reason: Bill had wanted to entice her with the idea of seizing "ultimate power," and as any respectable Northwest could tell you, _true_ enticement required vagueness, mystery, and only the barest hint of what was really on offer; anything else was just commonplace bribery.

More to the point, the last candidate to sit the throne hadn't exactly blown her away: back when he'd still been an adult, Preston Northwest hadn't even _thought_ about using the abilities the throne had begun to instil in him, and why would he? He'd only been able to envision power in terms of business – political clout, economic muscle, corporate influence, money and exchange – another reason why Bill had tired of him. Power as _magic_ had escaped his imagination completely… and for the longest time, it had evaded Pacifica's dreams as well.

Now, however, Pacifica understood.

Now, she _knew_ the power the throne could grant. She felt it in every fibre of her being, pulsing through every blood vessel, crackling across every nerve-ending, winding through her internal organs, rippling out across both hemispheres of her brain. It was part of her now, embedded so deeply that she couldn't have pried it loose even if she drew upon all the strength her new powers had afforded her.

She had taken _half_ of the throne's barbs: one by one, she'd driven them into her back, her shoulders, her arms, her legs, burying each one so deeply in her porcelain flesh that only the barest hint of the tips protruded from her. It had taken over an hour for her to adjust to each exponential surge of strength, drawing the implantation out for almost half a day, but in the end, she'd accomplished exactly what she'd set out to achieve. She'd followed Mr A's instructions to the letter, only taking as many barbs of the throne as she needed, and now… now she had everything she needed.

Conjuration, levitation, extrasensory perception, telekinesis, pyrokinesis – they had only been the tip of the iceberg. Now, she could _fly,_ soaring high over the rooftops of the Northwest mansion, winding her way about the chimney and gliding out across the verdant grounds. Now, she could lift the family limousine into the air and launch it clean across the garden with a wave of her hands. Now, the fire she could summon could very well wipe the mansion off the map if she willed it. Now, she could reshape matter at will, crafting weapons, clothing, equipment, even the world around her; with a little concentrations, walls dissolved into nothingness, floors remoulded themselves into fountains, and furniture took on a disturbingly plantlike aspect.

And most of importantly of all, she had the power to _escape._ She knew it the moment the last barb had thudded into place.

She could now create portals, carving doorways in the fabric of Bill's dominion and allowing her safe passage across his many playgrounds. True, she didn't know the layout of the place, so she had no idea where she was going and no way of obtaining a map, and the most effective portals could only be planted at the very edges of each little worldlet…

But for the time being, she was free.

…as were her parents.

"Do you think we could stop for a little while, Pacifica? Wherever we are, I'm pretty sure that Bill isn't following us."

Pacifica paused in mid-air, halting just long enough to spare a glance in Mother's direction. In all fairness, she was looking pretty worn-out by now, hardly surprising given that she'd gone without any of her usual pharmaceutical pick-me-ups for the last month or so: her dress was torn, her legs were caked up to the knees in dirt, her hair was a bird's nest of tangled blonde tresses, and on top of everything else, she'd been carrying Father in her arms for the last two or three miles.

 _Preston,_ she silently reminded herself. _We're calling him Preston now._

"Alright," Pacifica said out loud. "We can rest here, I guess. We're almost at the edge, so it shouldn't be too hard to open the doorway ahead once we've had a breather."

Sighing with relief, Mother slumped against the nearest available backrest – in this case, the trunk of a massive dead tree – and slid gently to the ground, Preston still in her arms. Both were asleep within seconds of sitting down.

They'd been journeying for well over a month by now.

The moment Pacifica had first gained the power to open portals, the three of them had gathered up all the provisions they could possibly carry and readied themselves to escape. Granted, they didn't leave immediately: it had taken a little effort to talk Mother out of packing the entire medicine cabinet, Preston needed to discouraged from bringing along his best tailored suits (which didn't fit him anymore, anyway), and even Pacifica herself wasn't entirely immune to this sort of frivolousness; more than once, she'd caught herself adding silk gowns and diamond necklaces to the luggage.

It was nothing more than habit and instinct, but it still annoyed her that she kept falling back on the old patterns: after all, Pacifica herself didn't need fine clothing or jewels anymore – not when her ability to control matter allowed her to create gemstones that would rival the Koh-I-Noor on a whim.

In the end, most of their supplies consisted of food, for though she seemed perfectly capable of conjuring up almost other any kind of object, edibles were apparently beyond Pacifica's abilities. No matter how hard she tried, the meal she eventually created ended up being puked right back out again. As such, it wasn't until they were weighed down with everything they could pillage from the kitchens that the three of them finally set off through the portal that Pacifica had opened.

Unfortunately, as Pacifica quickly discovered, because her powers were tied to the Throne, they tended to work the easiest when she was within reach of it: every time she entered a new playground, her magic struggled to adjust to the distance, leaving her temporarily powerless for several minutes. All in all, it wasn't such a trial, but it might very well be fatal if they ever arrived to find themselves in the middle of a war zone – which fortunately hadn't happened.

Yet.

Bit by bit, playground by playground, they'd slowly progressed across Bill's kingdom. So far, they hadn't met anyone yet, for none of the playgrounds had actually featured anything close to a settlement, much less a real prison. Most of the little pocket realities they'd blundered across were little more than nightmare landscapes – grisly sideshows to frighten travellers, really: roads made of petrified human skeletons, each one a ghastly white expanse dotted with millions upon millions of empty eye sockets staring up them as they crossed; forests where the trees hung heavy with corpses dangling from makeshift gallows, thick with greenery yet all but barren of animal life – except for the multitudinous flies that infested them; cathedral-like spires of wrought iron and shatterproof glass stretching eternally into the endless night, where lightning continuously split the sky with eye-searing bolts and multi-limbed wraithlike horrors oozed across the blasted earth in search of easy prey; foul-smelling oceans of shallow, brackish water and writhing plagues of rank-furred rats, each one instantly biting, clawing and swarming over anyone who strayed too close – an experience that left Preston almost catatonic with terror until Mother had agreed to carry him.

No combat – for a little bit of pyrokinesis was enough to send the roaming monsters running for cover; no sign of human life beyond the occasional abandoned camp; and worst of all, no way of finding out where the other members of the zodiac were being held – because at that point, finding Dipper, Mabel and the others was the only plan she had on hand.

After all, it wasn't as if there was anything _else_ to do, was there?

The journey had been slow: Pacifica needed time to recover the use her powers after every trip through a portal; Mother was continuously delayed by her shoes (which she refused to discard), her ongoing search for a well-supplied pharmacist, and the weird behaviour that resulted as her supplies of "medication" gradually ran down; Preston had accepted his new role as the youngest member of the Northwest household a little _too_ well, for he needed a constant procession of soothing words, held hands and the occasional push just to get moving again. In the end, it was just as well Mother was willing to carry him, otherwise he wouldn't have budged after the last few dozen scares.

But if nothing else, they were making progress. After all, they wouldn't be alone forever: sooner or later, they'd find someone – a group of refugees in search of shelter, a shantytown of desperate survivors eking out a living, or maybe just some lost wanderer like them.

Or maybe they'd find wherever Bill was keeping the other members of the zodiac, and they'd be able to rescue them.

Maybe, just maybe Pacifica would get to see Dipper again soon.

 _I just wish I could be human again when the time comes,_ she thought absently, unable to stop herself from glaring down at her glossy porcelain hands in disgust.

Unfortunately, Pacifica's abilities didn't extend to altering flesh, so he wasn't up to making herself into a human being just yet; that particular transformation would have to wait until it was safe to claim another barb of the throne… assuming it ever _would_ be safe. For more or less the same reason, she hadn't been able to return Preston to his real age, so it seemed as though he was stuck as her little brother for the time being.

 _And somehow, I've ended up getting used to the idea of my Father becoming my little brother. This might just be the weirdest thing that's happened since Weirdmageddon started, apart from the whole "Bill-turned-me-into-a-doll" thing. That's the one thing I don't think anyone would be able to adjust to…_

… _but I guess I'll just have to live with being a doll for now… and hope I really will get the chance to see Dipper and the others again…_

Pacifica sighed. "Come on, you two," she said. "It's time we moved on. The portal will be ready in just a minute."

"Aw, do we have to? I mean, I was just getting comfortable-"

" _Now,_ Preston. We need to keep going: I want to see if we can find someone before the end of the day."

"What day? We haven't seen the sun rise or set since we left the mansion!"

"Could we _please_ not waste time getting pedantic, Mother? We're running low on food already, and we're only going to waste more of them if we just sit around moping; if we can find someone – a camp, a settlement, one of the zodiac – maybe we'll be able to take a proper rest once we've stock up. Until then, we need to keep moving on."

By now, the three of them had been so many portals that they'd lost count – more than enough to establish a routine. As always, Pacifica began by marching up to the exact point where the little playground came to an end – usually taking the form of an invisible wall dividing this part of Bill's kingdom from the next, almost like the glass dome of a snow-globe. Then, Pacifica spread her arms wide, reaching out with all the power the Northwest Throne had granted her, grasping the edges of that self-contained world and pulling its ethereal substance taught; then she tore it, wrenching open a massive hole in the flesh of the world.

Bit by bit, she widened the gap, sending a glowing fissure sliding along the length of the wall; by the time she'd finished, the road ahead ended in a ten-foot-tall rent in the fabric of local reality, exposing a mass of multi-coloured energies swirling and eddying in geometrically impossible shapes. This was to be their gateway to the next section of Bill's kingdom.

As always, Pacifica glanced over her shoulder to make sure that Mother and Preston were paying attention before she began.

"Remember what we rehearsed," she said softly. "Until I give the all-clear, you stay put: don't follow me unless there's literally no other choice. Got it?"

Mother and Preston obediently nodded.

"Alright then... wish me luck."

And with that, Pacifica took a deep breath and stepped through the portal.

For twelve heart-stopping seconds, she saw nothing but a broiling maelstrom of eternally-overlapping lights and colours: it was like being shot headfirst down a child's kaleidoscope, a four thousand-mile-an-hour journey through a continent-sized tunnel of glittering geodes and boiling lava, bombarded on all sides by a cacophonous chorus of earsplittingly dissonant music, indecipherable words spoken in nightmarish voices, and random sound effects – everything from the rumble and sudden crash of thunder to the nerve-shredding shriek of fingernails on a chalkboard. But as the first twelve seconds passed, the light faded, and at last the swirling haze of colours and sounds began to resolve themselves into recognizable forms.

Neon-pink wallpaper, every inch of it glowing vividly in the warm daylight pouring in through the mural windows.

Forget-me-not-blue carpet, softer than clouds and thick enough to lose golf balls in.

Gigantic plush beanbag chairs, bouncing-castle beds, levitating hammocks and other furniture too ostentatious even for Northwest standards.

And a voice from the next room: a woman's voice – or so it seemed.

A giggling voice, sickly-sweet and poisonously saccharine, all syrup and cyanide and sandpaper. A voice that seemed to _purr_ , as self-satisfied as a cat licking fresh blood off its paws, but seemed to _grate_ at the same time. A voice without empathy.

" _ **Aw, cheer up,"**_ it said. _**"Come over here and have a seat on Auntie Pyronica's lap…"**_

* * *

Mabel wasn't entirely sure when time had started misbehaving.

Truth be told, she wasn't sure of anything anymore.

Bit by bit, the last few weeks had whittled away at her grip on events. The encounter with the mutilated Dipper had left her reeling; the discovery of the sock puppets – the only family and friends she'd ever know from now on – had left her a sobbing wreck; the sudden influx of new memories had almost destroyed her… and the sheer confusion over what had really happened had nearly sealed the deal.

Once, she'd known what had happened on the day of the puppet show – or at least she'd _thought_ she'd known what had happened: she'd stopped Bipper and saved her brother's life. And as shameful as the day had been in hindsight, in spite of all the stupid things she'd done and nearly done on that day, there was no denying the fact that Dipper had survived it.

But now… now her recollections of that day had all been thrown into question, for now she'd somehow ended up with a completely different set of memories.

Now she remembered the puppet show going off without a hitch.

Now she remembered finding Dipper's lifeless body at the foot of the water tower.

For days, Mabel had tried to ignore these new memories, to pretend that they'd been invented by Bill to torture her. After all, how could she be here in Mabeland if Dipper had died that day? The only reason she'd ended up here in the first place was because Bill had decided to reward her for giving him the Rift, and that had only happened because she'd accidentally taken it from Dipper.

And more to the point, what about that encounter in her room just a few weeks ago? How could she have seen Dipper, tortured and mangled just as badly as Grunkle Stan and Ford, if he'd been _dead_ long before Bill had gotten his hands on him? How would it have been possible for him to appear if the puppet show really had gone as badly as the new memories suggested?

But every time she tried to convince herself that Dipper had survived the day, doubt crept up on her, swift and merciless.

These new memories weren't visions that Bill had cooked up for her; they weren't like the flash-forwards she'd been subjected to for breaking the rules, those illusory mini-movies projected into her brain. She hadn't just _experienced_ the new version of events: she'd _remembered_ it – as if it had already happened, but had been forgotten.

So, what if Dipper really had died that day, and everything Mabel had experienced since the puppet show had just been something she'd dreamed up to cope with the awful reality of what had happened that day?

Or what if she'd simply gone insane during her time in the Endless Summer, and started inventing new ways to make herself suffer?

Or maybe – just maybe – she really _was_ in hell.

Why not? It made sense: regardless of whether she'd killed Dipper or the entire world, she was a horrible person. This was exactly the kind of place that people like her naturally ended up, wasn't it? A place where she had everything she'd ever wanted – but all of it made so poisonous and vile that it was impossible to stomach.

She'd had more ideas about what might have happened, but in all honesty, they mattered very little. In the end, the confusion only made her head throb and her nose bleed like a busted faucet.

For hours on end, she'd paced her bedroom, trying to force all the awful, awful thoughts out of her head, but they stubbornly refused to budge, no matter how many times she upped the volume on Mabeland's BGM. She would have liked nothing more to have gone outside, if only because the noise of the crowds would have been able to distract her, but it looked as though Bill had sentenced her to a long stay of house arrest as punishment for her newest failure to follow the rules, so it looked as though she was forced to stay put for the time being.

In the end, what had almost driven her insane wasn't the silence, the sense of confinement or even the torturous memories she'd been saddled with: it had been the puppets. She'd been pacing the room in a desperate attempt to keep herself occupied, when she'd happened to stumble against one of the crates that had been left behind during her last vision of Dipper and her Grunkles, and the whole thing had tipped over, spilling sock puppets all over the floor, all of them left to lie face-up, googly eyes staring directly at her.

And looking down at those goofy, cartoonish lumps of cloth, Mabel had been gripped by the unshakeable notion that the puppets were moving, that all of them were slowly shivering to life even as she watched: some were re-enacting the fatal puppet show, complete with a Dipper puppet launching itself to its death from atop a shelf; some were replaying the awful moment where Dipper, Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford had come to see her, all three puppets tattered and torn just so there was no ignoring who they represented; and some… some were creeping towards her, ready to make her suffer in ways she couldn't possibly imagine – even though _they weren't really moving_.

"No!" she'd yelled. "I'm not going to let you hurt me again! _I'm not here!"_

And with that, she'd dropped to the floor, pulled the neckline of her sweater over her head, tucked her arms and legs under the sweater, and curled into a ball.

" **MABEL'S IN SWEATER TOWN!"** she'd screamed, loud enough to be heard on the other side of the city. "You can't hurt her, because she isn't here to be hurt, and don't bother looking for her because nobody can hurt Mabel in Sweater Town! Mabel's going to be just _fine!_ She's going to be okay because she's still a good person! She's going to make everything right and Dipper's going to be okay and Grunkle Ford's going to be okay and Grunkle Stan's going to be… going to be… g…"

After that, it had gotten a little bit difficult to breathe.

Once she'd regained consciousness, eyes wet with tears and the taste of bile in her mouth, she realized that she couldn't stay in Mabeland a moment longer.

Between that last letter from Dipper and these confusing new memories, the world she'd created had actually gone _beyond_ unbearable: she couldn't stand the light, the colour, the music, the constant demands for her to attend executions, the sight of her face glaring back at her from the propaganda posters, the nightmares she endured every time she broke the rules, or the way Bill had to twist this place only _slightly_ to make it into a hell. Most of all, she couldn't stand the undeserved luxury of the place.

So, as soon as she'd been allowed near the portal again, she left Mabeland and made a beeline for the portal, fulling intending never to return to the utopia she'd built. Yes, the Endless Summer was its own special kind of hell, but if nothing else, it was a more honest one. After all, it wasn't as if anyone was going to attend executions, torture people or set herself up as a goddess; it wasn't as if the Endless Summer was going to make her into an even _worse_ person.

Was it?

Once she was there, she remained at the Mystery Shack for almost a day, drinking in the tomblike silence that had infested Gravity Falls; she needed the quiet, for it was the only respite from the mind-numbing patchwork of synth music, triumphal marches and nightmares that she'd been made to endure back in Mabeland. But eventually, restlessness and over twenty-four straight hours of sleep forced her out of the attic and out into the midst of Gravity Falls' motionless population.

And then she spoke to them.

For what felt like days, she bombarded the people of the Endless Summer with every single thought that crossed her mind, pausing only to eat or sleep – and sometimes not even then: questions, suggestions, jokes, one-sided conversations, anything so long as it vented all the thoughts she hadn't been able to voice back in Mabeland. As long as she didn't look them in the eyes, so long as she couldn't imagine their accusing glares, she could go on speaking until she'd exhausted all her pent-up emotions, all her frustrations, loneliness and guilt.

Because more than anything else, she was apologising. Sooner or later, no matter who she spoke to, she always ended up confessing – to how selfish she'd been, to how deeply she'd hurt Dipper time and again, the part she'd played in starting Weirdmageddon, the special privileges she'd been afforded back in Mabeland – all of it. She needed to say this, if only for the sake of her own sanity. Yes, she spent most of these confessions in tears, and yes, she found it difficult to stop talking once she'd started, but at least she felt better once it was all over and done with… for a time, anyway.

She could never confess to her own family, though: Grunkle Ford, Grunkle Stan and Dipper were always off-limits. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't say anything to them; every time she tried to speak, her throat clenched shut with guilt, strangling her into silence.

In hindsight, if she hadn't been so preoccupied with bawling her eyes out, she might have noticed that time in the Endless Summer was behaving oddly a little sooner.

Most of the things she _did_ see were only fleeting, split-second glimpses out of the corner of her eye, things all-too-easily dismissed as her depression deepened.

Little things.

Every now and again, she'd find fallen leaves in previously empty gutters.

Tiny footprint-shaped patches of dead grass seemed to appear in Mabel's wake.

A pillow she'd thrown off her bed somehow failed to hit the ground, remaining paused in mid-air until Mabel finally rolled over and looked at it – whereupon it dropped like a stone.

Cars halted in the middle of the street seemed to change position when Mabel wasn't watching, tyre-tracks suddenly materializing on the road behind them, as if they'd been moving at speed while her back was turned.

Leaning against a tree one trying day, she thought she heard the sound of wind stirring the branches and rustling the leaves – but how could that be when the breeze remained as motionless as the rest of Gravity Falls?

Strangest of all, clocks seemed to misbehave in her presence – in the sense that they started _working,_ but in ways that made no sense: her Meow O'Clock began ticking backwards, the clock in Grenda's house blurred into a furious fast-forward, common wristwatches always rewound themselves to 7:30 no matter how far they were tampered with, and Soos's heavily-modified alarm clock somehow began to function _normally_.

In the end, Mabel managed to dismiss all of this as her own mind playing tricks on her, partly because she was too preoccupied with her ongoing chats with the frozen citizens to pay too much attention, but mostly because she was beginning to think she really was insane.

And then one day, while aimlessly roaming the vast forest in search of something else to occupy her time, she found herself straying past the ranks of redwood, through regions populated only by the strangest and most magical denizens of Gravity Falls, and finally staggering to a halt at the threshold of the Enchanted Glade. She'd no idea what she intended to do in there, and frankly she wasn't thinking further than the next footstep, but one way or the other, she drifted placidly through the colossal gates like a sleepwalker, and into the den of the Unicorns.

Sure enough, just past the brook paused mid-babble and right at the foot of the frozen waterfall, the familiar figure of Celestabellebethabell sat placidly in the shade of a miniature rainbow.

For almost a full minute, Mabel stood in silence, staring up at the unicorn as she tried to figure out what the hell she was going to do next. Quite apart from the fact that she'd no idea what she'd intended to do here in the first place, something about Celestabellebethabell's unearthly stare seemed to burrow into her: no matter how hard Mabel tried to avoid the unicorn's eyes, her gaze always seemed to be _perfectly_ focussed on her regardless of where she stood in the clearing. And though she told herself that the self-important show-pony wasn't actually looking at her, she couldn't shake the feeling that Celestabellebethabell _knew_ she was there.

But unlike the citizens of Gravity Falls, there was no sense of suspicion or judgement in the unicorn's eyes.

 _Of course not_ , Mabel thought bitterly, _judgement was what you had on offer the_ last _time I was here._

No: if anything, Celestabellebethabell's gaze seemed almost mocking.

Taunting.

 _Come on in,_ those vacuous eyes seemed to say. _After all, you think you deserve to be here among us, don't you. Well, with an attitude like yours, you probably do. I mean, just look at you, Mabel: stupid, selfish, vain, insensitive and cruel… you'd fit right in here. You'd make a perfect unicorn!_

"Shut up," Mabel hissed.

Celestabellebethabell, who hadn't said anything before or after Mabel had entered the glade, remained perfectly silent.

"Stop _looking_ at me."

Mabel was crying now, trying furiously to blink away the tears even as they trickled down her cheeks in white-hot streams, trying to look away from the unicorn's piercing glare but failing, failing every time.

"I'm not _you_ ," she said, but without conviction. "I'm nothing like you, okay? I don't care what you think: I'm trying to be a better person, and I know I'm not making much progress, but at least I'm _trying_. I'm not just sitting here doing nothing while the world goes down the tubes."

Was it her imagination, or was that a smirk she saw on Celestabellebethabell's face?

"I can be a better person. I _will_ be a better person. I proved it once, I'll prove it again! You'll see – I'll show you!"

The unicorn's gaze flickered for a moment; had Celestabellebethabell just rolled her eyes?

"Oh, like you know any better? Have you helped anyone – ever? All you've had to do is look pretty and do as little as possible! I've made mistakes, sure, but I am trying to make things right! I learn from my mistakes!"

Mabel's guilt-fuelled imagination helpfully dredged up a few choice sentences: _yes, like you learned after the day Dipper came to save you from the gnomes,_ the Unicorn's silent gaze seemed to say. _Like you learned after your puppet show almost cost Dipper's life – and maybe it did! You've learned a lot of lessons, Mabel, and the only one that seems to have stuck is the one you learned_ **after you killed the entire planet** **.** _Oh well, better late than never!_

"OH SHUT UP!" Mabel shrieked, composure audibly shattering. "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP _SHUT UP!"_

Wildly scanning the glade for anything that could put an end to the non-existent tirade, she reached down, snatched up a decent-sized stone from the edge of the brook and threw it as hard as she could at the unicorn's defenceless face.

Immediately, Mabel regretted it. As hateful as Celestabellebethabell was, she didn't deserve to have rocks thrown at her for things she hadn't said – and more to the point, wasn't even capable of saying. Already, she was cursing herself for letting her imagination run wild, for losing her temper, for throwing stones, for _once again_ proving just how terrible she was at being "a better person…"

But no sooner had the stone left her hand…

It paused in mid-air.

For ten seconds, the rock hovered motionless in mid-air, frozen in time just like the rest of Gravity Falls.

Then, without warning, it zipped backwards through the air and landed in her outstretched hand so smoothly that Mabel barely felt the impact.

This wasn't telekinesis; remembering Gideon's magical amulet all too well, she _knew_ what telekinesis looked and felt like: this was time running in reverse. Looking around the glade, she could see that the rest of the area was still effectively frozen, so however it had happened, time had only shifted backwards for the rock in her hand.

Mabel took a very deep breath, and wondered – not for the first time since Weirdmageddon had gone global – if she'd gone completely insane in the last few hours and hadn't even noticed it.

But looking down at the rock sitting in her palm, thoughts of madness bouncing around the inside of her skull, an idea struck her: it was a ridiculous idea, an idea almost as crazy as she might very well have been, but the more she thought about it, the more intriguing it became. Supposing, just for the sake of argument...

Taking careful aim at a tree trunk on the other side of the glade, Mabel drew back her arm and flung the rock into the air. This time, however, time didn't stop: the rock simply soared across the clearing, bounced off the tree trunk, and vanished into the undergrowth.

Gritting her teeth, Mabel plucked another stone from the brook and tried again, this time trying to summon up the same sense of anger, guilt, embarrassment, regret and self-reproach she'd felt immediately after she'd lobbed the last stone at Celestabellebethabell's head… and this time, the stone once again stopped in mid-air and vacuumed itself backwards into her outstretched hand.

Bit by bit, she began to experiment on this strange new ability: a few cursory attempts to restart or rewind the brook failed, trying to put snapped twigs back together proved easier said than done, and none of the birds, fauns, gnomes, unicorns, or lost hikers in the surrounding woods responded to the power at all. This last one was more than a little bit perturbing, because either Mabel's powers didn't extend to living things, or the people here really were just mannequins made of flesh: she might very well be able to unpause them, but she'd never know it because the people here were essentially lifeless. Nonetheless, one simple fact remained unchanged:

Somehow, Mabel had found a way to tweak time, it if not control it outright.

And this hadn't been the first time it had happened, had it? The dead grass in her wake, the pillow hovering in mid-air – the power had been rippling around her for some time in fits and starts, but she'd only just learned how to actually _use_ it.

Was this a side-effect of spending so much time in Endless Summer? Was this some new trick Bill was playing on her?

Or was she just going crazy after all?

 _Oh well, if I'm losing my mind, I guess it could be worse: controlling time isn't so bad as far as hallucinations go._

* * *

By that stage, Mabel was feeling tired and, having no overwhelming desire to sleep in the forest – not after all the nightmares of Bill and Blendin that had ensued – she left the glade and set off back down the long, rambling trail that led away from the most magical regions of the forest back into Gravity Falls proper. But as the redwoods slowly thinned and the first of the houses crept into view, Mabel suddenly became aware that something in the Endless Summer had changed; something _new_ was in the air.

Having long since gotten used to the unearthly quiet that shrouded the town, it wasn't until she reached the outskirts of Main Street that she realized that something had finally broken the silence of Gravity Falls. Up until now, the only sound had been her own footsteps and the fading echo of her own voice as she screamed her confessions at the frozen townsfolk. Now, though…

It was a _hissing_ sound, an oozing, syrupy, sibilant susurration rippling across the rooftops and echoing down the streets. And whatever was making the sound, it had to be enormous – not just because of the sheer force of volume, but because every now and again, the hissing was joined by the sound of crustacean limbs clicking noisily against the asphalt.

By now, Mabel knew that she should leave: she should turn around and head directly for the portal to Mabeland, no matter how torturous the place had become to her by now; she'd no idea what could possibly be making that sound, but it couldn't mean anything good for her. In the end, though, curiosity won out over good sense. Mabel had been alone too long in one world or another, and she needed to see the new arrival with her own eyes – once again, for the sake of her own sanity, doubtful though it was.

So she continued onwards, following the sound of hissing to its source. It wasn't easy, though, for whatever the thing was, it didn't seem inclined to stay put; as such, it took almost fifteen minutes of frantic sprinting across the block before she finally turned a corner – and saw the monster with her own eyes.

For twelve stomach-churning seconds, Mabel could only stare uncomprehendingly at the creature sitting in the middle of the road before her, trying vainly to make sense of its hideous shape. Whatever it was, it stood taller than most of the nearby houses, its body stretching longer than a semitrailer; it's rippling flesh was a mottled, sickly shade of dark red and cobwebbed with pulsating black veins, and as Mabel crept closer, she swore she could see the faint but all-too-distinctive shapes of human faces oozing in and out of its bulk. After that that, descriptions became increasingly hazy, for the thing didn't seem in the mood to be recognized, much less classified.

At first, she thought it was a giant slug of some kind, for as near as she could tell it was little more than a colossal lump of gastropod blubber dripping with viscous slime and undulating hideously in the sunset. But then the monster shifted slightly, and she caught a glimpse of a gargantuan set of mouthparts protruding from its lumpen form, a ponderous tooth-studded siphon like the head of a lamprey; it was eating something, its mouthparts furiously sucking at something just out of view – producing the hissing sound that had drawn her this far, but she couldn't see what it was from this angle. Then, as the creature shuffled back and forth on the spot, she realized that its massive body was actually supported by an enormous set of lobster-like legs, clattering across the sidewalk with a series of earsplitting clicks louder than gunshots… except, as the creature's movements subsided, the legs sank back into its bulbous flanks like shark fins sliding back underwater. Then, a barrage of whiplike-tentacles erupted from its uppermost hump and lashed towards the nearest houses in a storm of fleshy tendrils, crashing through windows and dragging dozens of frozen townsfolk outside; as Mabel watched, the flesh of its back yawned open into a series of mouths from all over the animal kingdom – human lips and teeth, canine jaws, shark fangs, bird beaks, leech's suckers, insectoid proboscises, and dozens more that she couldn't even identify – all gaping wide to swallow up the bounty of motionless humans as the tentacles shovelled them down its countless throats.

Was it Mabel's imagination, or was the thing actually _growing_ as it ate?

Once again, the monster shifted in place, and at last she saw what its main set of mouthparts had been feeding on: lying in the middle of the road was a bus, its chassis peeled open like a can of sardines; by now, the nightmarish beast had nearly finished its meal, for the hissing had almost subsided, but Mabel could clearly see that the inside of the bus was _covered_ in blood.

Mabel clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the harsh intake of breath, but too late; the echoes were already travelling.

The hissing stopped.

Against expectations, the monster did not turn around. Instead, its bulk _rippled_ , and a legion of blood-red eyes suddenly opened all across its slimy form, each eyeball instantly focussed on her.

Then, the several dozen mouths across its back opened once more, and to Mabel's astonishment, the creature began to speak.

"Aaaaaah," it said, its voice a hundred-strong chorus. "Something new. Something fresher. Something tastier. Come closer, little morsel. Come closer and join your fellow kine."

"I'm fine right here, thanks," Mabel squeaked.

"Fitting. You are not like the others, it would seem. The kine here are bland and tasteless. They have blood, yes, and despite whatever magic suspended them this way, they have life… but they have no soul, no experience, no flavour. They have life, but have not lived. They are… artificial. Like the sun; I've stood here for hours and the light has not burned, let alone weakened me. Everything of this world is a sham…

"But you… yes, I can sense you are different. You are young, but you have seen more than most kine of my world had seen in a lifetime… and perhaps there is something more to you; there is something of this place's magic to you, little morsel, something more than human…"

Mabel thought again of how she had somehow been able to control time a few minutes ago, and wondered if she'd be able to use it again at short notice. It didn't seem likely, but if she could summon the power with effort, she'd need to buy some time and distance: she needed to keep this thing talking, and she needed to back away – nice and slowly, so it didn't notice its prey was making a break for freedom.

" _Your_ world?" she echoed, trying to sound braver than she felt. "What are you? Are you another one of the Henchmaniacs?"

"I have been many things, child. "Henchmaniac" is not one of them. In life, I was one of the Awakened, a Mage and Seer in the time before the Flood. In death, I was the Childe of Ynosh the Lawgiver, Grandson of Caine the Dark Father. After the Deluge had passed, my children hailed me the Eldest, the greatest of those they called Antediluvians. Now… now I am **more.** Now I am all things. Now I am God, the final evolution of the vampire race."

Mabel blinked, pausing in mid-step. "You're… a vampire?" she blurted out.

"Yesssssssssssss. We called ourselves Kindred, but since none are left other than myself, I see no need for obfuscating labels. If you must call me by a name, you may refer to me as Tzimisce."

"Shimmy-see- _what?"_ Mabel echoed, suddenly too confused to be frighted. "No, no, no, back up the crazy train a minute: _**you're a vampire?!"**_

Tzimisce laughed.

"I see your thoughts, little morsel. You've wanted to encounter something like me for some time, yes? I see visions in your mind of… Norman, yes? He was nothing more than gnomes, but you hoped he was a vampire! This is your golden opportunity, then! Come closer: meet your fantasy in the flesh…"

"Uh… thanks but… well, I kinda had other things to do today. I mean, I'm flattered you'd like to drink my blood and everything but-"

Once again, Tzimisce laughed, its dozens of mouths gaping in perfectly-synchronized mirth.

"You think that's all I want, little morsel? Oh no, sweet kine. I've expended a great deal of effort sending this extension of myself across dimensions, and now this proxy body is hungry for more than mere vitae: it requires flesh, biomass to absorb and assimilate to prepare it for the task of further exploring this new world. Come closer, little morsel. Join my totality. **Be of me."**

And without warning, Tzimisce's body began reshaping itself, sprouting tentacles, crustacean claws, oozing pseudopods tipped with screaming human faces; snarling, four-legged shapes tore themselves loose from the monster's hide, jaws sprouting needle-sharp fangs as they lunged towards Mabel; enormous birds erupted from the upper slopes of Tzimisce's mass and swept down at her, talons outstretched; and as the vampire god finally turned its colossal body to face her, Mabel saw that Tzimisce's "face" was now a writhing mass of barely-human figures slowly lurching free from the protoplasmic mass of flesh, each one of them reaching out with vestigial, half-formed arms to seize her.

For a split second, Mabel thought of using her newfound powers to stop her attacker in its tracks, a ghost of her old confidence briefly rallying just long enough to keep its head a few inches out of the grave. But then fear took over: what if she couldn't get her control over time to work? What if she got it wrong? Or what if Tzimisce was immune to her powers?

She wouldn't have asked questions like these before Weirdmageddon. She would have let Dipper ask them and taken the plunge by herself, totally assured that she could have done the impossible. But then, things had changed: between all the isolation, the torture, the new memories and the relentless picking at her insecurities, something vital had been lost. She wasn't the same girl anymore… and perhaps, if those powers were any evidence, she wasn't even human anymore.

So instead, she simply put her head down and ran as fast as possible in the opposite direction, sprinting along the street with all the speed the imminent fear of death could grant.

 _You're okay,_ she told herself, trying vainly to resuscitate her confidence as the houses blurred around her. _You've gotten out of tighter scrapes than this. Remember the Gobblewonker? That was just as dangerous and a whole lot faster than_ this _thing… okay, the Gobblewonker wasn't out to drink your blood and absorb you, but you survived that. You can survive this. All you've got to is get to the portal, and you'll be safe._

A vulture the size of a small airplane rocketed past Mabel's head, talons snapping shut on the exact spot her left arm had been a split-second ago. Behind her, she heard the sound of snarls and growls drawing closer as the four-legged shapes continued their pursuit, until she could almost feel their breath on the back of her neck.

 _Might be just a tiny bit easier said than done,_ she reflected.

Up ahead, something vaguely human-shaped lurched out of an alleyway, followed by at least twenty more freshly-spawned from the vampire's bulk, swiftly cutting off Mabel's escape route. Skidding to a halt, she turned around, aiming for a fresh route down the path to her left – only to be brought up short by a pack of snarling fleshy wolves, backed by a wing of vultures. After that, her only other option was to backtrack, but by now Tzimisce was blocking the road, its ponderous mass barring all escape attempts.

Suddenly caught in the metaphorical headlights, Mabel froze, paralysed by the sight of the monster creeping towards her – inescapable and seemingly unstoppable.

"Why are you running, little morsel?" Tzimisce called, its multitude of voices only slightly muffled by the click of its feet against the road. "You don't want to run, not really. You want peace. You want freedom. You want an end to your suffering. I can hear your thoughts, sweet kine: I can sense the guilt in your wretched soul, the twisted memories in your head. Betrayal weighs heavy on you, and madness cling to you like the scent of the grave. You **know** you're a horrible person, and you know that you didn't help anyone and that you didn't make a difference in any way… and more to the point, you can't make a difference even after all the different ways this place has changed you. You don't want to live, and you don't believe you **deserve** to live, not after what you did to your family. Surrender to me, Mabel Pines, and you'll never have to think about them again; be of me and I will grant you sleep eternal."

Maybe it was the stress, maybe it was the hopelessness, maybe it was the simple fact that the vampire had been correct in every word it had said, but the notion of surrendering sounded almost too inviting to dismiss. And for a moment that seemed to last forever, Mabel wanted nothing more than to lie down and let Tzimisce absorb her.

And then, just as she was taking the first fatal steps towards the vampire god, closing her eyes as she went, a thought – a single, maddened, desperate thought – echoed across her brain. It was nonsensical at best and utterly pointless at worst, but it was enough to stop her in mid-step.

 _What if this power really_ could _make a difference? What if I_ could _see Dipper again, and apologise?_ It went. _What if it's not impossible? What if really I_ could _make things right?_

In all honestly, it was an idea that only Mabel could have thought of, a ludicrously fantastical thought completely outside the boundaries of reality, a concept that arrived on a tide of rainbows and pure sugar flanked by levitating dolphins with musclebound human arms… but it was enough to ignite that familiar white-hot spark inside her mind.

Mabel opened her eyes just in time to see one of Tzimisce's tentacles looming overhead, ready to snatch her away. And in that moment, the spark inside her brain _erupted:_ the thought of seeing Dipper again, of making things right, of finally being able to apologise – it was now the fuel her powers needed.

And just as it had when she'd thrown the stone at Celestabellebethabell, the newfound magic flared outwards.

Suddenly, the tentacle wasn't in motion anymore.

Suddenly, the vampire-god was frozen in place, trapped in suspended animation – and whatever force controlling the fleshy monstrosities he'd conjured up was frozen as well: instantly, the humanoid shapes blocking the way toppled, tumbling over one another like shopfront mannequins at a bowling alley; a moment later, the wolf-like creatures collapsed as well, and even the vultures spiralled helplessly from the sky.

Mabel didn't know how long her powers would keep Tzimisce under wraps, or even if the vampire god wasn't capable of undoing what she'd done. One way or the other, she wasn't sticking around to find out.

* * *

By now, Mabel knew that returning to Mabeland would be an open invitation to be subjected to every form of emotional torture that Bill Cipher could possibly devise… but in the end, it was a whole lot better than getting eaten by Tzimisce. So, as she leapt through the portal, she contented herself with the thought that _hopefully_ her new powers still worked in Mabeland, and with a little effort and a lot of luck, she might just be able to master them.

 _Question is, what the heck am I gonna to after that?_ She wondered, as the portal walls eddied past her. _I don't have the power to just conjure up a way out of here, and this place isn't a prison bubble so I can't just burst my way out like last time. So what am I supposed to do once I've gotten the hang of this whole "stopping time" business?_

All those questions and more ended up on Mabel's growing list of problems. But if nothing else, at least some of the problems looked mildly solvable this time.

Unfortunately, the moment she found herself back in her bedchamber, she realized it wasn't going to be as simple as she thought – which wasn't saying much, admittedly. Something was wrong: the room was dark; the lights had been dimmed, the curtains had been drawn – even what little sunlight she could see through the curtains seemed distinctly subdued. For once, gloom pervaded in the normally garish Mabeland, along with a distinct note of menace. But it wasn't until Mabel saw the figure lurking behind the monumental desk that she realized what was wrong.

Pyronica was seated in her chair, perpetually-stilettoed feet on the desk and a wicked grin on her face.

"Well, look who it is!" she cackled. "The Queen of Mabeland, back in her kingdom at last! How's it been going, Shooting Star? You been having fun? Been lonely out there in Endless Summer?"

"What do _you_ want?" Mabel shot back. She should have been minding her manners, especially after all the extra punishments that had been heaped on her every time she'd showed defiance, but she was too tired and too annoyed to tread carefully. Besides, after her little run-in with Tzimisce, the Henchmaniacs just weren't up to frightening Mabel anymore.

"Is that any way to talk to a friend, Your Highness? Bill's sent me to keep an eye on you." She theatrically tapped her single eye with a long, flame-wreathed finger. "And here I am, just for you. Just to make you feel better… and you look like you need it, am I right?"

"Look, would you just say what you came here to say or leave me alone? I'm really not in the mood to be toyed with at this point, not after what happened to me back in Gravity Falls."

"Oh really? And what happened there, Shooting Star? Was it painful? Was it torturous? Was it _nightmarish?"_ Pyronica's grin erupted into a horrorshow of mismatched buckteeth and fangs. "Do tell, do tell. Bill's had me running around deep space conquering refugee installations every other day of the week, and I need something to keep me warm on those cold… lonely… _**massacres**_. So tell me, what happened?"

 _That's weird. Either she's screwing around with my head, or… she really doesn't know. Have they not been watching me? Do the Henchmaniacs_ really _not know what's been going on?_

"Don't feel like telling me?" Pyronica asked. "Oh well. I suppose I'll have to make do with the forlorn screams of orphans crying over their dead parents. But enough about me – what would cheer _you_ up?"

"What'd be the point in telling you? You'll only pack me off to solitary confinement for telling you."

"Oh, turn that frown upside-down. You've got a lot to be thankful for, if you'll think about it: you just need a few pointers on how to have fun, Shooting Star. I mean, I could give you a makeover that could make entire ecosystems die in your presence, and I could show you how to eat sunlight until the stars die… but I'm not making this about me. What'd make you happy?"

 _Seeing my family again. Knowing Dipper's still alive. Knowing I still have a chance to say sorry. The chance to make things right._

The depression must have shown on her face, because Pyronica made a cooing noise that might have sounded almost _maternal_ if it had emerged from a human voicebox, but from her it sounded like the howl of the wind in a desolate canyon.

"Aw, cheer up,"she purred. "Come over here and have a seat on Auntie Pyronica's lap…"

And before Mabel could even think of saying no, Pyronica's tongue shot out at whiplash speed and wrapped itself around Mabel's waist; suddenly, she was airborne, reeled helplessly across the bedchamber like a fish on the end of a hook. At the last moment, just before Pyronica's jaws slammed shut, the tongue released her, depositing Mabel right in the Henchmaniac's lap.

"There," simpered Pyronica. "Isn't that better? No need to fuss. Just sit here and let your troubles bleed to death."

She ran a soothing hand through Mabel's hair in a gesture that might have seemed affectionate if Pyronica's hands hadn't been permanently shrouded in glowing pink flames. However, to Mabel's surprise, the monster's touch was ice-cold, the flames on her arms seemingly emitting glacial frost instead of heat – enough to make her shiver in more than mere disgust.

"What do you want?" she asked quietly.

"To make you feel better, of course!"

"Let me guess, your idea of making me feel better is to give me another round of death warrants to sign."

"Jeez, Shooting Star, try to hang on to a little bit of that optimism. I'm here with a belated birthday present – a little something to take away the tears…"

And with a snap of her fingers, an elegant crystal decanter materialized on the desk, accompanied by a small cluster of tiny glasses. As Mabel sat up to take a closer look, she saw that the decanter was filled to the brim with an electric-blue liquid; whatever it was, it smelled distinctly of blueberries and thunderstorms, and as Pyronica held up the decanter to allow her a closer look, the fluid inside rippled with miniscule sparks and tiny discus-like bolts of lightning.

"Bottled Serenity," she explained. "The best thing in the world for someone in your condition."

"And what condition's that?"

"Bill thinks he's been unfair with you. I mean, he set you some pretty challenging rules already, but… well, Bill's sweet enough to admit that it wasn't sportsmanlike to give you a game you couldn't even play: you've got a problem, Shooting Star, something that makes this game unwinnable from Mabeland. That guilty conscience of yours won't let you take the next step… so Bill sent me to give you a helping hand, just to ease the transition."

"How's that?"

"You've been burdened by your conscience for too long, Shooting Star: the guilt over what happened to Dipper, over not liking Ford, over helping to start Weirdmageddon – it's holding you back, and no matter how many times Bill's tried to push you in the right direction, you keep tripping over your conscience. It's been driving you mad, hasn't it? You've been so tormented by all those thoughts in your head that you don't know what's real and what's not; you've been hallucinating, remembering things that didn't really happen, am I right?"

 _Question is, did I hallucinate the puppet show gone wrong, or did I hallucinate the puppet show going_ right? _Or was Tzimisce a hallucination, too? I'll never know, because I_ know _you'll never tell me._

"And this is where the Bottled Serenity comes into play: this takes the weight off your shoulders. One sip, and all those awful feelings – depression, loneliness, fear, self-loathing, guilt, _**empathy**_ – it all goes away for the next five hours. For those five hours, you'll never have to feel a minute of guilt over the things you did to your family… and you'll never have to feel bad about attending executions."

For a moment, Mabel could only stare.

"You're giving me a drink that's gonna turn me into a psychopath?" she whispered.

"No. Bill's giving you a chance to be happy _._ Empathy's been holding you back, Shooting Star: once you realize how much _fun_ you can have without a conscience, you won't even mourn it. Those thoughts about your family? Gone. The regrets over Weirdmageddon? Gone. All those thoughts about what a horrible person you think you are? Gone. Just like that. And in their place? Nothing but happiness. You can be just like you were – your usual happy-go-lucky hamster-on-coffee self – but better, freer, _purer_ than you could have ever imagined. Don't you think you've earned the right to be selfish after everything your family threatened to take away from you? Don't you think you _deserve_ to be happier than they could ever be?"

Mabel opened her mouth to tell Pyronica to go to hell – and then thought better of it.

"Do you really want to spend the rest of your life hating yourself? This place doesn't have to be a prison. All you have to do is have a drink of Bottled Serenity. See how it feels for a bit, and then make a decision."

"What do you mean?"

"The first drink's free, Shooting Star. If you want another drink after that… you'll have to prove you want it. Play by the rules we've set you, attend the executions, rule heartlessly, and you'll have everything you need to make those doubts go flushing down the toilet. In the meantime, the first drink's free."

And with that, Pyronica was gone, and Mabel found herself sprawled in the suddenly vacant chair, alone in her room at long last.

But the decanter of Bottled Serenity was still sitting on the desk. For twelve awful seconds, Mabel could only stare blankly at it, unable to think of what she could possibly do next.

Then, acting on reflex more than anything else, she reached out to touch the bottle; she could have been trying to pour herself a glass, she could have been about to smash the bottle and spill the contents before she could be tempted to drink – she didn't know. The moment her fingers brushed the glass, fear took over and she snatched her hand back as though the bottle was full of acid.

And with a terrible surge of despair, she realized that she didn't know what to do.

Every instinct in her body told her to take the bottle and throw it out the window, to tip it down the drain, to smash it to bits – to get rid of it before temptation got the better of her. Even if she was stupid enough to knowingly accept a deal from a Henchmaniac, the advertising spiel wasn't all that inviting: taking that fatal sip would be all the conformation she needed that she was beyond redemption, that the only thing she "deserved" would be an appointment with Tzimisce.

And yet…

…the offer of being able to endure all the guilt this place could throw at her and not feel anything… well, as much as Mabel hated to admit it, it was almost impossible to ignore. After so many punishments in Mabeland, months of brain-numbing rule over Mabeland and weeks of isolation in Endless Summer, the prospect of being able to switch off her conscience and be happy with herself was tempting – very tempting.

 _Think about it, what if you just played along until you satisfied the rules of the game? A few drinks, a few executions, a little wrongdoing, and that'd be it. They'd let you out, and you'd never touch another drop of Bottled Serenity again. How much simpler could it be? Besides, it's not as if you've got the power to open portals, is it? Unless this time control stuff can allow you to break out, you're stuck here forever._

Mabel sighed, and did her best to shake off these intrusive little thoughts – to no avail.

Once again the same terrible game: either let herself become exactly the kind of monster Bill _wanted_ her to become, or remain his prisoner, tormented for all eternity.

And this time, _she couldn't make up her mind._

Almost throwing herself out of the chair, she began to pace the room, trying again and again to make a decision, but every time she was building momentum towards either taking a drink or discarding it, some terrible new doubt would rise up and leave her floundering aimlessly.

For the longest time, she wanted nothing more than to return to the reassuring confines of Sweater Town. But by now she knew that it would grant her little comfort, and wouldn't help her make up her mind anyway. So with no options left, she sat down on the floor right in the centre of the room, closed her eyes… and began to speak.

To pray, really.

"Dipper, if you're listening… I don't know if you died after the puppet show or if you're still alive and being tortured by Bill; I don't know if that… that vision of you and Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan was real or not; I don't know if you'd ever forgive me for everything I've done; I don't even know if I'm even sitting here right now – for all I know, I'm sitting in a padded room with a stick between my teeth, I don't know. I don't know much these days… but I want you to know I'm sorry. I'm sorry for every stupid, selfish thing I did back before Weirdmageddon, and I'm sorry for… for..."

She paused, realizing with a fresh wave of guilt that she couldn't even bring herself to say it out loud. "For Weirdmageddon," she finished at last. "I'm sorry I ignored what I'd done, I'm sorry I tried to replace you, I'm sorry I never confessed to what I did, I'm sorry that I never apologised until it was too late, and I… I'm just so sorry I never told you how much I cared for you when I had the chance."

 _Oh lord, could I at least get through this without crying? Please?_

"I miss you, bro-bro. You'd know what to do in a situation like this: you were there to show me the way out when I was trapped in Mabeland the first time, and I need your help to deal with it now. I don't know what to do anymore: I don't know if these powers will help me or if Bill's just playing another trick on me; I don't know if drinking the Bottled Serenity is my only way out of here; I'm out of ideas. Believe me, I've tried, I've tried so hard, but I don't know what to do! Please, help me: show me the right way. Give me a sign. _Please,_ I-"

From somewhere behind her, there was a muffled crash of breaking glass.

Opening her eyes, she saw that the decanter of Bottled Serenity had been smashed against the desktop, the precious contents now spilling over the edges and quietly soaking into the carpet.

"Dipper?" Mabel whispered.

"Uh… no," said a familiar voice. "But if it makes you feel any better, I really miss him too."

There was a long pause, as Mabel's eyes frantically scanned the darkened room for the source of the voice; then, at long last, she noticed the diminutive figure clambering onto the chair.

" _Pacifica?"_

"So you still recognize me," the figure remarked drily. "Either I haven't changed that much or you've still got a working brain in there; after all that time you spent talking to yourself, I was starting to think you'd lost it."

"But… why are you a doll?"

Pacifica sighed deeply, pinching the bridge of her porcelain nose in exasperation. "That's a very, _very_ long story, Mabel, and right now, we don't have the time. We've got to get out of here before Pyronica starts sniffing around again; I don't know if I'm up to fighting Henchmaniacs yet, and I don't want to ruin our big chance for freedom."

Mabel blinked uncomprehendingly, trying to make sense of the last sentence – without much success. Needless to say, she had not been expecting this. The sudden development of time-controlling powers had surprised her; the appearance of the twenty-foot-tall vampire god had shocked her; but Pacifica suddenly appearing behind her desk – in the form of a porcelain doll – was so far off-script that Mabel could only boggle in confusion. And the things that she was saying simply didn't compute on any level. Freedom? Fighting Henchmaniacs? Getting out? Good things – escapes, victories, genuine happiness, whatever – just weren't on the agenda anymore.

And yet… if all that was true, why was Mabel feeling hopeful all of a sudden?

In the end, she could only mumble, "Getting out?"

"Yes!" Pacifica erupted, grinning in a spectacularly un-Northwesterly way. "Breaking out! We're staging a jailbreak! Now, come on! We've got the rest of the zodiac to find – starting with Dipper!"

* * *

A/N: Coming up next, the zodiac finally flex their muscles, the Henchmaniacs take a dim view of things, and a recent Chekov's Gun is fired.

Or, to put it another way...

 **EZNKRIRHN'H YFG Z KZHHRMT KSZHV  
Z HGVKKRMT-HGLMV GL WZIPVI WZBH  
GARNRHXV DZH GSV URIHG GL XSZMTV  
ZMW HGROO VMWFIVH RM DLIOWH HL HGIZMTV**


	21. Jailbreak Brawl

A/N: (deep breath) I'm alive! Don't ask me how, but I'm alive! I'd hoped to post this about five days ago, ladies and gents, but environmental terrors got in the way. Long story short, a colossal thank you to all my viewers, reviewers, favouriters and followers!

Lizzie 2145: There will always be hope! Remember the message of Android Karenina!

Hourglass Cipher: Oh yes it will - alas, I have to delay that reunion for a few chapters...

Kraven the Hunter - keep your spirits up! There's still hope for those two yet. Oh, I may have to use "zitmice" at some point in the future - it's so gleefully irreverent I can actually hear it being spoken by Bill! Oh, and there will indeed be just a little bit more Pyronica...

OMAC001: I'm beginning a massive turnaround for the Zodiac's fortunes, so yes, there will be more optimism even in the gloom.

LoyalTheorist: Loved your review, and I particularly liked your prediction of Ford's state - time will tell wether it'll be true or not. Thanks again!

Magus Templar: Thank you so much for your overall review! I'm overwhelmed by your generosity, and I hope my output continues to live up to the standards set so far!

Northgalus2002: Well, if it helps, you might want to check out the final code in this chapter...

Promissa Fidel: So sorry to hear of your loss, and I'm glad that I was able to provide some small catharsis. Take as long as you need in times of crisis. In the meantime, thank you so much for your lovely long reviews: the conclusions you drew were brilliant!

Guest: Good news and bad news - the reunion will be happier, but Tzimisce isn't finished yet... (dramatic music)

Fantasy Fan 223: Thanks again for your review AND your art! I'm always flattered that my stories inspire such creations, and I hope this latest chapter proves worthy of the hype!

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls isn't mine; neither is the Cthulhu Mythos or Vampire: The Masquerade.

* * *

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Zmw sfmgh uli kzdmh gszg sv xzm xozrn  
"Xzigvi" hvvph gsv svilvh uvd  
Gl lmv wzb grog gsv ylziw zhpvd

* * *

For the next ten seconds, Mabel could only stare at Pacifica in utter incredulity, replaying the previous sentence in her mind over and over again, hoping that it might start making sense if she repeated it enough. So far, there didn't seem to be any light dawning no matter how she tried to process it.

After four or five repetitions the only sensible conclusion she could draw was that Bill was almost certainly screwing with her again. After all, that was the safe bet, wasn't it? Mabeland had always been intended as a trap, a place where good things only led to more opportunities for her to be selfish: what else could this "escape" be but another chance for Bill to railroad her into being a horrible person?

And yet… why would Pacifica have appeared as a doll? That was the one detail that made her doubt Bill's involvement – and probably the only thing keeping her from retreating to Sweater Town.

Meanwhile, Pacifica was loudly coughing for attention. "Mabel, are you awake in there? Don't mean to rush you or anything, but we _really_ have to leave before Pyronica comes back."

By way of an answer, Mabel crept forward and gingerly prodded Pacifica in the chest. To her immense relief, her hand touched solid matter. Whatever this doll-person was, she was at least tangible enough to be touched… but then, that didn't necessarily mean she was actually _real_. Tentatively, she reached out for another test, only for Pacifica to gently push Mabel's hand away.

"Could you _not?"_ she snapped. "I know this looks weird, but I am actually a living thing under all this porcelain. Well, something _like_ a living thing, anyway."

Mabel took a deep breath, and realized she was trembling. "Are you real?" she asked softly, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"What?"

" _Are you real?"_ Mabel burst out. "Are you another of Bill's tricks? Please, Pacifica, I need to know if you're real or not – I _need_ to know."

"If I really was something Bill cooked up, then would I tell y…" Pacifica must have seen the look of desperation on Mabel's face, because she stopped in mid-sentence, visibly biting back a smartmouthed remark. "Yes," she said at last. "Yes, I'm real. I know things are pretty weird right now, but I promise you: I am the real Pacifica Elise Northwest, and I'm here to rescue you."

"Alright then… prove it."

"We really don't have time for this, Mabel: that neon-pink lunatic will be back any second and I already told you that I don't know if I'm up to fighting Henchm-"

" _Prove it._ Tell me something only you would know: names, addresses, passwords – anything, just give me something to go on. Please, whoever or whatever you are, I need to know, I _need_ to know this isn't a trick."

Pacifica gritted her tiny porcelain teeth in a painful-looking rictus. "Mabel," she hissed, "I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: if we die, I'm suing you."

Mabel's heart gave the tiniest of leaps.

"Pacifica?" she whispered, almost too afraid to even hope.

"Yes, I'm glad to see you too, we can catch up on happier times later, for now we just have to get out of here, etcetera, etcetera… oh, and could you please keep your voice down? The Henchmaniacs are a lot of things, but I'm pretty sure they aren't deaf."

Mabel hastily lowered her voice to a murmur... and then continued. This was the most important question of all: nothing could delay it – she _had_ to know the answer to this if she'd ever be able to live with herself again. "Before we go, just tell me… is Dipper alive?"

For the first time since she'd arrived, a note of uncertainty flickered across the perfect porcelain features. "I don't know. I'm hoping he is. Bill told me that Dipper was still alive, and I know he's hardly trustworthy, but now that he's got control over literally everything, he can easily bring anyone back to life, right?"

"No, no, no, that's not what I meant, I-" Mabel took an even deeper breath. "Was Dipper still alive after my puppet show?"

Now it was Pacifica's turn to stare in incredulity. "Don't you remember?"

Mabel tried to keep her voice down, but as the stress of the last few days finally found an outlet, her voice began picking up speed and volume until at last she was almost shouting at the top of her lungs. "…I used to. At least, I _think_ I used to. But during the last few days… or hours – I'm losing track of time – something went wrong and now I don't know what really happened anymore. Now it's like I've got two different sets of memories and neither of them make sense! I've run it back and forth in my head over and over again, and no matter how hard I try, it just doesn't make sense! It doesn't make sense! It do-"

"Mabel, your _nose!"_

Blinking in surprise at the look of concern on Pacifica's face, Mabel belatedly realized that she'd ended up with another nosebleed. As she reached for the box of tissues on the desk, Pacifica took the opportunity to reply.

"Look, just think about this for a minute," she began. "If Dipper had died right after the show, would I be here? Without Dipper, my parents wouldn't have anyone to exorcise the Lumberjack Ghost and Northwest Manor would have burned to the ground with everyone inside it. And even if I'd somehow survived all that…" Here, Pacifica bit her lip. "I wouldn't be who I am today. I'd still be just another link in the world's worst chain. So you see, the only reason why we're having this conversation right now is because Dipper is alive."

Once again, Mabel's heart gave a leap – miniscule at best, but it was enough to get her moving.

"Now, come on," Pacifica urged. "Let's not keep him waiting any longer. Now, we've got just a few minutes to gather up some supplies before we go-"

"Oh, and Waddles!" Mabel exclaimed, suddenly excited in spite of herself.

"…and Waddles, yes."

"Waddles! C'mere! We're getting out! We're all getting out!"

There was a muffled grunt from the adjoining room as Waddles slowly unearthed himself from the mass of pillows he'd been sleeping in for the past few hours, and trotted briskly up to the two of them with a look of what could only be described as relief in his tiny eyes. He'd spent most of his time in Mabeland unconscious, magically sedated and locked in another part of the building every time Mabel rebelled – if only because having Waddles around might have made her imprisonment a tiny bit easier – and even the little pig could realize that the two of them had been separated for far too long. For good measure, he even offered a welcoming _oink_ to Pacifica.

For her part, Pacifica could only look bemused. "…hi. Um, we really need to get moving now, okay? I don't know how much time we have left, but-"

" _ **What's going on here?"**_

Mabel very slowly turned in the direction of the door, and saw at once that Pyronica was standing there, her colossal horns carving divots in the ceiling as she dipped her head past the doorframe. The bucktoothed grin was gone from her face, her single gaping eye was narrowed with suspicion, and the flames shrouding her hands had begun to flicker violently.

"Anyone wanna explain?" she demanded. "What is Famine doing out of her enclosure, and what is she doing with Pestilence ahead of schedule?! Seriously, this is so far out of the gameplan it's not even funny! You, Llama-girl, what are you doing here? If you're powerful enough to be here and now, you should know the damn rules: you belong in the Northwest Mansion until Bill says so!"

She took a deep breath, closing her eye for a minute while she struggled to get her temper under control.

"Okay," she sighed at last. "Okay, okay, okay, I'm calm, I'm cool, I'm calm… I am A-Okay with this situation as it is."

She paused, visibly forcing her smile back on, and when she spoke again, her voice was once again sickly-sweet, more purring than grating. "I see what's going on here," she said. "You got a little bit carried away with all the new powers you got and decided to peek in on the rest of the petting zoo. Well, I get that, really, I do. You're a Northwest: you _know_ you're better than any other human on the planet, so you like walking among the plebs just to rub it in their faces and make them feel all the more pathetic for not being you. So once you got all the powers of the throne, you decided to see what Shooting Star here was up to just so you could make her feel a little bit more miserable. I like your style, kiddo, but now's not the time: Shooting Star is off limits until Bill's done with her. So, if you'd just follow me, I'll take you home… and if you're on your best behaviour, I'll even give you some _real_ people to test your powers on. How's that sound?"

"No."

The smile on Pyronica's face suddenly froze. "What."

"You heard," said Pacifica. She was afraid, now, trembling slightly in spite of her best attempts at bravado… but still she stood her ground. "I'm not playing along anymore," she continued defiantly. "I'm staging a jailbreak: I'm getting Mabel out of here, and there is _nothing_ you can do to stop me."

For about five seconds, Pyronica could only stare down at the doll in utter bewilderment, smile gently shifting into reverse gear. "You're not supposed to be like this!" she hissed, suddenly furious again. "You're supposed to be almost one of us! You're supposed to act like one of the family! _You're supposed to think like a Northwest!_ "

"And that's why you lose," Pacifica shot back. "Because you and Bill never really understood me, because you thought I was just another Northwest: arrogant, greedy, selfish – just like my father, right? Bill didn't really believe I rebelled against my family, not after all the Northwests who served him after all those years, so he thought that if he bribed me with enough power I'd be back to being another link in the world's worst chain. Is that it? Well it didn't work. You lost. _ **Bill**_ **lost."**

"But you're supposed to be under Bill's thumb! That last barb should have gone straight through your skull and into your frontal lobes, zapped what little empathy you had left! Why are you being so-"

Pyronica stopped in mid-sentence, jaw thundering open as some new realization sank in.

"You… _don't_ have all the barbs? But how? How would you have known to stop? Who told you that you'd be able to open portals without taking all the barbs? _That was supposed to be a secret!"_

Her eye flickered to the shards of broken glass at the foot of the desk. "And you destroyed my batch of Bottled Serenity?!" she shrieked. "No, no, no! You are not making me lose this round, Llama-girl! I bet some my best slaves on this game – the _best_ gladiators you could anywhere in what's left of this putrid ball of dirt – and I'm not handing over any of them to Lava Lamp just because _YOU_ decided to spoil my gambit! I'm not losing any of my bets, I'm not losing face with the other Henchmaniacs, I'm not losing my part in this game, and _I'm not having some porcelain-coated blue-blooded wannabe rebel STEAL MY GLORY!"_

She pointed a long, flame-wreathed finger in Mabel's direction. " _You,_ out. I don't care where you go, but get out of here – _now."_

But Mabel had heard enough: she wasn't going to back down, not when escape was within reach. She didn't even dignify the Henchmaniac with a response, but simply stood her ground in total silence.

Pyronica's face twitched violently, and the flames shrouding her hands suddenly blossomed, expanding to cover her shoulders. "Shooting Star, I'm warning you-"

"Go ahead and warn me then." Even Mabel was surprised at the iron in her voice.

"-If you think shutting you up in the void and introducing you to all your mangled relatives was the worst thing we can do to you, you're in for a nasty surprise-"

"Like what?" Mabel shouted. "What could you possibly do to me _now?_ You're not going to kill me – not permanently, not without getting Bill mad over lost toys, and you've already put me through hell ever since Weirdmageddon went global, so what could you possibly do to me?!"

"I'LL DO EXACTLY WHAT I DID TO YOUR BROTHER!" Pyronica bellowed.

In spite of herself, Mabel smiled – a triumphant grin she hadn't worn in what felt like years. "So he really _is_ still alive, then?" she replied, unable to keep the mischief out of her voice.

And if Pyronica had looked stunned beforehand, now she looked completely shell-shocked.

"You just made me lose," she said quietly. The flames were expanding once more, creeping from her shoulders to her spine, flowing up her neck and oozing across her horns. "You… you were supposed to suffer like never before and keep on suffering until you toed the line and… and you made me lose. That's five thousand slaves I'll never see again because of you. You made me lose. You… _made…_ _ **me**_ _…_ _**LOSE!"**_

Suddenly, she was in motion, a neon-pink ball of flame rocketing towards Mabel at the speed of sound. But before she could reach her, before Mabel could even think of using her newfound power over time, however, a blur of blue satin and blonde hair shot in from the left and slammed into Pyronica at high speed, catapulting the Henchmaniac backwards across the room and into a shelf of kitschy paraphernalia with an ear-splitting crash. Blinking wildly against the gale-force wind of acceleration, Mabel saw that the blur was none other than Pacifica, now hovering ten feet off the floor and shrouded by a vivid aura of energies.

"HA!" she crowed triumphantly. "Guess I am up to fighting Henchmaniacs after all!"

There was a blood-curdling howl of fury from the ruins of the shelves, and Pyronica burst free with a colossal blast of pink flame and ceramic shrapnel. "It's not going to be _that_ easy, Llama-girl," she hissed, apoplectic with rage.

Pacifica threw a hasty glance over her shoulder. "Take cover, _quick!"_

"But I can help-"

"Not the time to argue, Mabel!"

And any further objections Mabel had were drowned out by a furious growling from Pyronica. Snarling loud enough to rattle the windowpanes, she advanced on Pacifica, luminous magenta-tinted flames billowing from her outstretched hands and rippling across the carpet towards her. For her part, Pacifica just swatted the flames aside with another flex of her inexplicable new powers and retaliated accordingly, pelting the oncoming Henchmaniac with a barrage of tyre-sized fireballs. None of them appeared to do any serious damage to the target – after all, how could you burn someone who was already on fire 24/7? – but the constant flash of erupting fireballs definitely left her disoriented; her next attack, a pulse of squirming red-and-black energies oozing across the air like a writhing horde of worms, missed Pacifica completely.

By way of a reply, Pacifica waved a hand, sending every single loose object in the room flying at the oncoming Henchmaniac in a telekinetic hailstorm: paperweights, desktop ornaments, beanbag chairs, end-tables, the remnants of the shelves, and even Mabel's colossal desk rose into the air and catapulted themselves at Pyronica. Desk drawers and display cases long since sealed shut even to Mabel now tore themselves open, pelting the neon-pink demon with a host of treasures forbidden to the mistress of Mabeland – including her grappling hook. Larger pieces of furniture were easily deflected with brisk swings of Pyronica's colossal fists, but the smaller objects slipped past her defences, bouncing off her horns and shattering against her skull – not enough to seriously injure, but more than enough to leave her reeling.

Hoping to tip the odds a little further in Pacifica's direction, Mabel hurried over, hoping that she might be able to use her time-powers on demand for once. Unfortunately, she'd chosen the wrong moment: no sooner had she stepped forward, a sizeable piece of deflected furniture came rushing in from above and landed squarely on top of her. On the upside, beanbag chairs weren't serious crushing hazards even at the size Mabel liked them, but it took a little while for her to find the edge of the bag and clamber out from under it, and by then, the tide had already turned.

Pyronica's jaws had gaped open into a distended fang-lined maw, her tongue rocketing outwards and latching onto Pacifica's leg before she could float out of range. The telekinetic storm instantly ceased, leaving most of the objects to clatter harmlessly to the ground as Pyronica reeled her target in. For one heart-stopping moment of terror, Mabel thought the Henchmaniac was actually going to swallow her whole, but instead, Pyronica once again let her go just before the beartrap-like jaws slammed shut, snatching her out of the air with one flame-shrouded hand and pinning her to the ground.

"Oh, I'm going to have fun with you," she chortled. "I'm more than ready to rehash the old favourites. You know what I did to Pine Tree? I flayed him from the eyebrows up, tore his skin off and left him bleeding in the dirt, screaming like a disembowelled baby. Better still, I made sure he survived… and best of all, I did it all while disguised as _you!"_

From somewhere just beneath the Henchmaniac's colossal hand, Pacifica let out a muffled scream of rage.

"That's right," cackled Pyronica. "You had a thing for him, didn't you? Well, I couldn't have done it without you, Llama Girl: he had a crush on you too – or at least, he _used_ to. Bet you wish you really had been too much of a Northwest for him now, huh? Oh, just imagine leaning in to kiss his pretty little face, and watching his eyes go wide in horror! Can you even imagine those screams? Oh, but you won't have to – because I'm going to do the same thing to both of you! I'm going to wear your skin as shoes – one porcelain, one leather!"

She reached down, blazing fingers curling into talons. "Close your eyes now. Just lie back and think of Pine Tree. Just imagine him lying in the dirt, blood pouring out of his head, crying like the pathetic waste of flesh he always was. Imagine those screams…" Pyronica's grating purred twisted into a horrifically-accurate mimicry of Dipper's voice. "'Aaaaaaarrghh! Noooo! Mommmmyyyyy! Help! Mabel! Grunkle Stan! Grunkle Ford! Anyone! Help meeeeee-'"

Mabel didn't even recall moving, let alone how she ended up with a weapon in her hands. One minute she was slumped on the floor, struggling to get her feet untangled from the beanbag and musing at the familiar sight of the grappling hook in the floor in front of her; the next she was on her feet, armed and ready.

Noticing the muffled _phut_ echoing across the room, Pyronica looked up just in time to get the hooks of the grapnel square in her gums. Caught off-guard, she lurched away with a squeal of pain and surprise, lost her footing, tripped over the overturned desk, and crashed facefirst into a wall.

" **GRAPPLING HOOK!"** Mabel shouted triumphantly.

Groaning, Pyronica prised herself away from the ruined brickwork, spitting plaster.

"Ow," she panted. "You think that's… that's all it takes? You can't even _hurt_ me, much less-"

Her eye widened as she noticed a freshly-airborne Pacifica making a few well-chosen gestures in her direction; a moment later, the desk caught Pyronica squarely in the face. This time, she rose spitting teeth instead.

"Alright," she mumbled. "If you want to spend the rest of your lives in the void, that's just fine." Clearing her throat, she turned to the nearest window, and bellowed "CITIZENS OF MABELAND! YOUR MISTRESS IS ESCAPING! TO ARMS – _NOW!"_

For a moment, there was silence.

Then, the alarm bells began sounding. A quick glance out the window revealed that all over Mabeland, waffle guards were ascending skywards, swarming towards the tower in a vast stream of heavily-armed batter.

Behind them, the cuddly kitten soldiers followed in their thousands, shouldering their rifles and leaping nimbly over low rooftops as they honed in on the tower – the first rank immediately scaling its walls with their bare claws. Leading the horde was Dippy Fresh, racing ahead of them on his skateboard, armed with a baseball bat and screaming radical warcries at the top of his voice.

And some distance behind the army, a vast column of armoured vehicles made a beeline in the direction of the tower, their silvery hulls and gold-leaf decorations glittering magnificently in the sunlight: jeeps, trucks, tanks, rocket platforms, all rumbling down the road towards Mabel – all of them ready to fire at a moment's notice.

And at the far end of this colossal armoured serpent, just past a devastating array of hideously beweaponed fighter planes, Judge Kitty Kitty Meow Meow Face-Shwartstein stood on the bridge of a massive dolphin-shaped airship, its muscular arms tipped with missile-launching fingers, its bottle-nosed snout literally armed to the teeth with technicolour energy weapons: the pride of Mabeland's armed forces, the flagship of its mighty security fleet, the MAFV _Aoshima._

Not far behind the armada, the citizens of Mabeland awkwardly followed on foot, a poorly-armed ragtag militia aimed in the direction of the dissenters and shepherded along by a small brigade of brutal enforcers. Having been dragged out of their homes and told to apprehend the "offending elements" – or face execution – these unfortunates now made up the bulk of a million-strong army converging on Mabel's tower.

Once again, the forces of Mabeland were out to stop its apparent mistress at all costs.

* * *

The next ten minutes were a little hazy.

Mabel knew for a fact that Pacifica spent the first thirty seconds locked in a brutal psychic melee with Pyronica; she remembered the first of the waffle guards pouring in through the windows, and she quite clearly recalled the exact moment when the cute kitten soldiers began scrambling up the sides of the tower. But once Dippy Fresh arrived on the scene, skateboarding across the walls and guffawing like an idiot, things got just a tad confused.

Whatever the case, it was one of the single most violent and disorienting fights that Mabel had ever been in during her short-but-colourful life: a sizeable number of the kitten soldiers and the waffle guards were trying to restrain her, pouring in on Mabel at all angles in a furious attempt to seize her arms and force her into handcuffs; the rest joined Pyronica in trying to kill, maim or capture Pacifica (not necessarily in that order); Pacifica was bombarding any opponent in rage with an increasingly destructive barrage of psychic power, from telekinetic hailstorms to pyrokinetic blazes, along with occasional branches of energy that even Mabel had trouble recognizing; and Mabel herself, unable to get her powers to work on demand, was fighting off her opponents with anything she could get her hands on.

Chairs, table-legs, lightweight furniture, her grappling hook, weapons from fallen soldiers, the fallen soldiers themselves – if it was within reach, it was repurposed as a weapon. More than once, she was forced to make do with her bare hands – or, in the case of the waffle guards, her teeth.

Less than forty seconds in, the exertion of battle and the sheer influx of enemies reduced the whole thing to a blurry procession of bangs, crashes, screams and the occasional explosion. Most of the time, Mabel wasn't really sure what she was doing: all she knew was strain of her arms and the desperate need to keep the advancing soldiers at bay. But even amidst the chaos and carnage of the battle, a few moments still stood out in perfect detail:

The _Aoshima_ strafing the tower, its gun turrets peppering the windows with gunfire as Judge Kitty hollered orders at the troops via a megaphone…

…A giant waffle guard being toasted by Pacifica's abilities and flung out the window – where he was messily devoured by the hungry militia…

…The grappling hook snagging a kitten soldier by the collar, allowing Mabel to swing him around like a fail, bringing down a whole crowd of oncoming guards…

…Pyronica, excited with rage, snatching up a bundle of her own protesting troops and launching them at Pacifica two at a time…

…bolts of lightning arcing across the room, burning the carpet and searing several unfortunate militiamen out of existence…

…an overzealous kitten guard accidentally tripping over Waddles and tumbling headlong into a waffle guards ("Good boy, Waddles!")…

…the tower shaking as the tanks outside opened fire, sending dust and chunks of masonry raining down from the ceiling…

…Mabel picking up a waffle guard's fallen table knife and getting into a short but vicious sword-fight with the captain of the guard …

…a ponderous plush-toy official trying to open the door to the void, only to end up being bowled over by an artillery blast and pitched right through the rapidly-closing doorway…

…Pacifica finally managing to get the upper hand in her psychic armwrestle with Pyronica, catapulting the Henchmanic clean through a wall and into the _Aoshima_ 's engines, sending the vast airship on a death-dive into the armoured column below…

…Dippy Fresh lunging towards her, handcuffs at the ready – only for Mabel to kick the skateboard out from under him and pummel him in the crotch with it, leaving him to crawl helplessly away with a whimper of "Not cool, man…"

Eventually, another explosion below finally snapped Mabel out of the haze, and she realized that the melee was beginning to clear: with Pyronica still trying to claw her way out of _Aoshima'_ s wreckage, Dippy Fresh retreating and Judge Kitty stranded too far away to do anything meaningful, the demoralized enemy troops had clearly had enough for the day. Unfortunately, that left the war engines below with no reason to hold back: immediately, the tower shook as a series of artillery strikes hammered into the foundations, and from below came a long drawn-out groan as the building began to crumble.

"How were you planning on getting us out of here?" Mabel panted, as the bombardment temporarily subsided. "Not trying to sound gloomy or anything, but I think I'm gonna pass out if we continue fighting."

Pacifica sighed and finally lowered herself to the ground. "I got in through a portal just outside the room," she explained, "But I had to close it the moment I realized there was a Henchmaniac in the area – I didn't want her finding her way back to my parents."

"Well, can't you just open another one?"

"Not as easy as it sounds: it takes a little while to open portals, and at the rate these kitten-things are bombing the tower, I don't know if the building will stay up long enough for me to get going. Besides, I haven't quite… adjusted yet: it takes me a while for my powers to get used to new playgrounds."

"Is that why you started off small in the battle?"

"That's one reason, but- _LOOK OUT!"_

Mabel wheeled around just in time to see a waffle guard, a straggler fighting his way out of the stampede, zeroing in on her with a massive net in his overmuscled hands, ready to throw it over her head. Taken completely off-guard, Mabel was too surprised to move in that moment, her mind suddenly crowded – once again – with all the things she wouldn't be able to do if she were captured and killed.

And once again –

Magic flared outwards.

This time, it didn't stop her attacker completely, but it certainly slowed down: the waffle guard was still moving, but very, very slowly – perhaps half an inch per minute by the looks of things.

There was a stunned pause, as Pacifica looked from Mabel to the now-harmless guard. "Do you want to explain how you did that?"

Mabel opened her mouth to explain… and then an idea struck her. Suddenly operating on autopilot, she scooped Waddles up and made a beeline for the back of her room, mind working faster than ever before.

"We don't need a portal," she realized aloud. "We've already got one!"

* * *

"Where are we? And why it look so much like Gravity Falls?"

"This is Endless Summer – and it pretty much _is_ Gravity Falls, just frozen in time."

"You still haven't explained what we're doing here, Mabel."

"Well, we're buying a little time for you to conjure a portal out of the prison."

"But it works best if I'm right on the edge of the playground! What are we doing right in the middle of the town?"

"It has to be here, Pacifica, or not at all."

"And what if that army of kittens and waffle-men follows us in here? I still can't believe I'm saying that, by the way."

"Well, they've never been able to leave Mabeland, so we should be safe."

" _Should?_ Oh, even better. And what about Pyronica? She's not one of the Mabeland creations, so the same rules don't apply to her. What if _she_ follows us?"

"Don't worry: I've got a big surprise for her!"

Pacifica sighed deeply. So far, she had just about given up trying to imagine what had happened to Mabel since she'd last seen her back in the Fearamid: she _thought_ that what little she'd overheard in Pyronica's monologue might be able to explain things, but Mabel's "confession" and all her queries about reality and Dipper's survival had driven away those little certainties in a matter of seconds; her sudden manifestation of time-controlling powers had just about killed any further guessing stone dead. Now that they were in Endless Summer and running through the streets seemingly at random, she was officially out of ideas: nothing could possibly explain what Mabel was doing or why.

 _Just trust her_ , Pacifica told herself. _She's saved your life before: she obviously knows what she's doing. She's not a lunatic or anything like that; she's just a little frazzled, that's all._

"Vampires!" Mabel exclaimed suddenly. "They never look the way you think they will, do they?"

 _Oh god, I'm following a madwoman with a pig under her arm._

And then, just as Pacifica was starting to wonder if they'd ever get around to opening their exit portal, there was a thunderous crash from behind them, followed by a distant but unmistakeable shriek of laughter. A quick glance over their shoulders revealed that a massive plume of smoke was billowing up from the very edge of the forest, right at the very point where the gateway from Mabeland had deposited them.

"COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE!" Pyronica howled. "DON'T MAKE ME ABUSE ANY MORE CLICHES, BECAUSE I'M NOT IN THE MOOD FOR IT!"

"Well, she's followed us," Pacifica muttered. "What do we do now?"

Mabel hastily set down Waddles, and began hurriedly scanning the street-signs around them, as if searching for her answer. "You stay here," she said at last. "Get to work on opening that portal. If I'm not back in the next minute, leave without me. Just look after Waddles, okay?"

And with that, she took to her heels again, sprinting down the road as fast as her tattered shoes could carry her.

"Wait!" Pacifica hollered after her. "Where are you going?"

"To get that surprise I told you about!" she shouted back, vanishing around the corner before Pacifica could ask for clarification.

For a moment, Pacifica seriously considered hurrying after her, either to assist in whatever she had planned or just to drag her back before she did something terminally stupid; after all, thanks to her new powers, she was a lot faster in the air than Mabel was on the ground. But in the end, she decided against it: even if the plan didn't work, they'd still need an opened portal on the double. So instead she stayed put, and set to work on the process of shaping the ethereal atmosphere into a gateway, hoping against hope that Mabel knew what she was doing.

"YOU WANT TO MAKE A GAME OF THIS?" Pyronica roared; her voice was much closer now, and the neon-pink glow of her flames could already been seen billowing across the rooftops. "THAT'S JUST FINE BY ME! I _LIKE_ GAMES! SO WHAT'LL IT BE? GUESS-A-HIDING SPOT? HIDE-AND-SEEK? HOT AND COLD? OOH, LET'S MAKE IT HOT AND COLD… BUT I BET YOU'LL _**FRY ALIVE**_ LONG BEFORE YOU ADMIT DEFEAT!"

 _I really hope this plan of yours is up to scratch, Mabel, because if this doesn't work, Bill is going to know that we escaped… and I don't like the odds of withstanding an all-out attack from him and the rest of the Henchmaniacs._

"CHECKERS? BLACKJACK? CHAINSAW JUGGLING? OR HOW ABOUT RUSSIAN ROULETTE? I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO SEE WHAT DOLL BRAINS LOOK LIKE…"

Pacifica muttered a few less-than-ladylike expletives under her breath as she struggled to get the portal open: as always, it was easier to close the damn thing that it was to open them, but with Pyronica breathing down her neck it was a thousand much harder to focus her willpower on a doorway leading back to her parents, and in the middle of this particular duplex playground it was like trying to wrestle water.

Not too far away, there was a muffled rumble, followed closely by a series of gunshot-like clicks.

"Pacifica!" Mabel shouted. "Job's done! Get the portal ready!"

Much closer, there was an ear-splitting shriek of tortured metal, and the ruined carcass of a pickup truck went soaring over the rooftops less than a hundred yards away from Pacifica's position. And when Pyronica spoke again, her voice was _much_ nearer – almost whispered in her ear… except, if Pacifica's psychic radar was any evidence, the Henchmaniac was still at least a block or two away.

"You think Shooting Star's your friend, Llama Girl?" Pyronica telepathically sneered. "Think again. She's a friend to nobody but herself. A lying, traitorous backstabbing cow. And I should know: the only reason us Henchmaniacs are here is because of Shooting Star's treachery. I mean, I'm betting you've already heard the story about how the Rift 'accidentally' broke in her backpack, am I right?"

Pacifica hesitated. Back in the Mystery Shack, Dipper had been very open in explaining how the Rift had first been broken after the argument with him and Mabel, and he'd placed the blame very squarely on himself for getting the bags mixed up. At the time, Pacifica had accepted this explanation, especially once the work on the Shacktron had begun… but now she thought about it, it _did_ seem a little bit conspicuous that Mabel had been so quiet when Dipper had explained the accident.

"Oh yes, I can tell you have. Well, what if I told you that it wasn't an accident at all? What if I told you that you've just teamed up to the greatest traitor in recorded history? What if I told you that your little friend helped doom the human race to an eternity of torture?"

In that moment, Mabel arrived, sprinting around the corner and skidding to a halt right next to Pacifica; behind her, the clattering noise echoed in the distance, louder than before. "He'll be along in just a few seconds," she panted. "You'd better get that portal open soon or-"

"Oh, Shooting Star!" Pyronica cackled; she was closer now, less than a few streets away from their position if Pacifica's senses were accurate. "We were just talking about you! I was telling Llama Girl here all about the day you gave Bill Cipher the Rift!"

Mabel froze, an expression of horror immediately stamped on her face.

"That's right! _SHE_ started Weirdmageddon! She wanted to keep Pine Tree by her side, an eternal summer that she could end any time she liked, and Bill decided to oblige her: she gave him the Rift, he gave her Mabeland, and because of her, BILL CIPHER RULES ETERNAL! How does that make you feel, Llama Girl, knowing that your friend here doomed you to everlasting torment? Ready to kill her? Ready to make her suffer just as badly as you suffered? As badly as Pine Tree suffered?"

Pacifica looked down in astonishment at Mabel, who was now staring at her shoes, shamefaced and wilting in the limelight.

 _That's what she was confessing to back there,_ she realized. _That's why she's been going to pieces in here. God, how long has she been going crazy because of all this?_

Once again, the gunshot-like clattering sounded – this time much closer.

"And that's going to be the real fun," said Pyronica triumphantly. "Watching you on the day you finally get to see what Bill did to ol' Pine Tree. Oh, it's gonna be biblical, Shooting Star. It's going to be nothing short of MONSTROUS!"

There was a blur of motion, and then Pyronica was standing over them; now thirty feet tall and all ablaze, her body rippled with neon-pink flames and sparks poured from her needle-sharp stilettos like tiny rocks.

" _ **FOUND YOOOOOUUUUUU!"**_ she bellowed. "IT'S TIME FOR _**FUN AND**_ … what was that noise?"

Again, the clattering rippled down the street, somehow louder even than Pyronica's roaring.

And then Mabel's "surprise" landed on her with a bone-splintering crunch.

A gargantuan ball of writhing flesh the size of a semitrailer mounted on dozens of multi-joined crustacean legs, it had somehow pounced on Pyronica from one of the nearby rooftops and immediately sank a bouquet of leech-like siphons into the startled Henchmaniac's belly. Screaming, Pyronica tried to wriggle out of the monster's grasp, but it merely sprouted a cluster of scorpion-stingers from its underbelly and pinned her to the ground by the shoulders.

"Fresh prey!" it thundered from a thousand screaming mouths studded across its back. "At last, a substantial meal! Surrender your blood, demon-thing! **Be of me!"**

Hundreds of tentacles erupted from the creature's flanks, each one tipped with a leech's head, all of them greedily seeking out Pyronica's flesh and latching on with gluttonous abandon. Howling untranslatable expletives, she pummelled it again and again with her flame-shrouded fists, and though the fire clearly scorched its colossal bulk and left charred craters all across its underbelly, the wounds seemed to vanish within seconds of appearing – even quicker as the monster began sucking hungrily at her veins.

"What the hell is that thing?!" Pacifica shrieked.

"It's Tzimisce," said Mabel, sounding shell-shocked and faraway.

"Shimmy-see- _what_?"

The question seemed to budge Mabel from whatever trance she'd been hovering in for the last few minutes; suddenly, she was awake and alert again. "Nevermind that," she said urgently. "We've got to get that portal open _now_ , before that thing decides to have you for dessert!"

Concentration now fully unoccupied, Pacifica made another grab for the edges of the portal she'd been forming – and this time, the fissure opened wide, blinding white light unfolding from nowhere to cover the entire roadway ahead. Then, telekinetically shoving Waddles into Mabel's arms, Pacifica grabbed her by the sleeve of her sweater and dragged her through the portal.

For the next few seconds, all the three of them knew was the same kaleidoscopic display that had played out across all other portal. And all the while, Pacifica couldn't shake the feeling that something was following them–

-and then they were tumbling out across barren soil, rolling to a halt amidst the roots of a dead tree.

No sooner had Pacifica sat up again, there was a diabolical scream from the portal; split-seconds later, Pyronica's head burst through the portal, her single eye wide with hate, jaws gnashing in rage. A moment later, her right arm dug deep into the ground like a harpoon, anchoring her in place.

However she'd escaped from her struggle with Tzimisce, she hadn't done so unscathed: luminescent blood poured from over a dozen puncture wounds across her body, one of her horns had been snapped clean off, she was missing her left arm just below the elbow… but in spite of all that, she was still fighting. A quick glance in the direction of the portal revealed that she had barely managed to step through the doorway, for one of Tzimisce's tentacles had snagged around her legs, and the only reason why she'd managed to reach as far as the exit was by growing as tall as she possibly could. She was all ablaze now, trying frantically to either burn away the tentacle or simply force it to release her: once that was gone, there'd be nothing to stop her from reaching them.

"I… DO… NOT… _**LOSE!"**_ she roared at the top of her lungs. "YOU'RE COMING BACK WITH ME, AND YOU'RE GOING TO DRINK THAT BOTTLED SERENITY IF I HAVE TO FORCE IT DOWN YOUR THROAT! I'M WINNING THAT BET IF IT'S THE LAST THING I-"

Her face froze mid-scream, suddenly cutting off the diatribe.

"I can't hold her like this forever, Pacifica," Mabel gasped.

Acting on instinct, Pacifica reached out with all her power, grasping the edges of the portal as tightly as she could – and then forced them closed.

Pyronica had just enough time to let out a surprised and purely telepathic mutter of " _Well_ _ **that**_ _wasn't supposed to happen!"_

And then the portal slammed shut; with a muffled _woosh_ , the energies of the ethereal gateway sheared through her remaining arm, tore through her neck and neatly decapitated her just below the chin, sending her head rolling helplessly into a ditch as the portal finally dissipated.

* * *

For almost five minutes, Mabel and Pacifica could only lie there, wearied from their exertions and bewildered at the fact that they'd somehow achieved the impossible.

They'd just killed a Henchmaniac.

Against all odds, they'd slain one of Bill's elite minions… and suddenly the odds didn't seem quite so astronomical as before – to Pacifica at any rate. For the longest time, she wanted to punch the air in triumph, to hug someone, to shout with joy; for the time being, she was still too overwhelmed by the last few minutes of fighting.

It was Mabel who was first to break the silence – timidly, barely raising her voice above a whisper.

"I know I don't have any right to ask anything of you right now, but…" She paused, clearly struggling to collect herself; her eyes were full of tears. "But if you could just drop me off in another playground, I won't bother you again."

Pacifica blinked in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm guessing you probably don't want to be around me anymore, and I don't blame you for that. I don't blame you at all. I just lead a minute of your time, and portal to help me move to wherever I need to be next: if Dipper's still alive, I need to find him, and I know for a fact that I don't deserve company after… after what I did. So I'll have to go it alone."

This time, Pacifica couldn't even blink: she could only stare in astonishment.

"I mean, maybe I don't even deserve the luxury of your help, and that's…" Mabel's lower lip wobbled dangerously; she was clearly struggling not to cry now, fighting with all her might to keep her breath steady, "That's _more_ than fair," she continued at last. "Perhaps there's another way out of here, so I-"

She stumbled away, loping awkwardly down the rough pathway back into the wasteland – only for Pacifica's telekinetic lasso to haul her back down the road until the two of them were almost eye to eye.

"Where exactly do you think you're going?" Pacifica demanded.

"I just told you: I'm going to find Dipper."

"Not on your own, you're not! We're staying together on this."

Now it was Mabel's turn to look astonished. "But I… you heard what Pyronica said about me, right? About how I gave Bill the Rift, started Weirdmageddon, doomed the world – I mean, you do realize that all of it was true?"

"Of course I do. I overheard enough of your confession to make me wonder a bit, and Pyronica just about sealed the deal."

"Then why…" She really was crying now, tears rolling down her cheeks in their dozens. "Why would you want to be anywhere _near_ me after everything I've done? I gave Bill everything he needed to take over the world; sure, I didn't realize it was him at the time, but that doesn't change the fact that I was willing to do anything to get just a little more summer! It doesn't change the fact that I was stupid and selfish and _I got everything I deserved back in that prison!"_

"Mabel, it wasn't your fault," Pacifica soothed. "Bill tricked you – just like he tricks everyone."

"It doesn't excuse anything! Everything that happened after that deal – Weirdmageddon, Bill torturing Grunkle Ford, Grunkle Stan getting shot, the world ending, everyone getting tortured and imprisoned – all of that was my fault! Don't you see that? And where was I while everyone was out there in the wasteland? I was living it up in Mabeland! I _replaced_ Dipper! I made "a more supportive brother" because I couldn't care about the real one! And now… now Dipper's imprisoned somewhere and Bill's done something awful to him and…" she let out a choked sob. "Look at what happened to you! Bill transformed you into a doll because of what I did! Why do you even want to be anywhere near me?"

"Because I'm your friend, remember?"

" _Why are you being so nice to me?!"_ Mabel wailed. _**"I'm a horrible person!"**_

"So was I."

Mabel blinked, caught completely off-guard. "…what?"

"Don't you remember what I was like when we first met, Mabel? I was everything my father wanted in his heir: arrogant, spiteful, bigoted, and above all else, loyal to nobody but the family. I followed every single one of his orders without question – not just the ones about holding myself above the rest of the plebs, either, but the orders that we didn't want the police to know about. The ones that I was uncomfortable with. The ones that made me feel sick just looking at myself in the mirror afterwards. Do you remember why you and Dipper were invited to the Northwest party? Father and I knew all about the ghost that had been haunting the mansion; we knew the Lumberjack had died because of Nathaniel Northwest's crimes, and we knew how to placate him… but instead, Father told me to sweet-talk Dipper into getting rid of the ghost, to wine and dine him into getting everything we needed to cover up our dirty little secrets.

"And you know what? Father didn't have to trick me into doing it. He didn't even need to use the bell on me that time. I just… did what I was told. It wasn't until Dipper shouted at me that I finally felt guilty, and it wasn't until I finally found that shrine of the Northwest atrocities that I realized that our legacy was a sham and every scion of our proud family had been rotten to the core – but most of all that _I_ was a horrible person. But with Dipper's help, I changed: in spite of my Father, in spite of the bell, I changed. And whatever you did back when you were still being conned by Bill, whatever you did when you were in the Prison Bubble, you've changed as well: you left Mabeland the first time, right? And whatever Bill did to you in there, whatever Pyronica tried to tempt you with, it didn't work: _**you're still a good person.**_ You know it, I know it… and most importantly, Dipper knows it."

"…really? You really think he'd forgive me for Weirdmageddon?"

"Why wouldn't he, Mabel? He's your brother: after everything you've been through together, after all the mistakes you've made, why _**wouldn't**_ he forgive you?"

And against all the instincts that Father had once tried so hard to instil in her, Pacifica lifted herself until she was at eye level with Mabel's face, and then hugged her tightly around the neck.

Sobbing openly, Mabel returned the hug as best as should could – no easy feat considering the target was the size of a doll. For thirty seconds, the two remained locked in their hug, until at last Mabel's tears had ceased and at last she could breathe easily.

"Now dry your eyes," Pacifica said gently. "It's time we went looking for Dipper."

* * *

Barely a skein of reality away, eldritch eyes watched the two playthings leave with considerable interest.

"Heartwarming," said Nyarlathotep. "I'd say those two are off to a good start, wouldn't you?"

"You still have not answered my questions," said Tzimisce, his bulk rippling with indignation. "Who are you and why have you disturbed my feast?"

"Folks around here call me "Mr Carter." Older tongues called me Nyarlathotep, the Black Pharaoh. My true name? Well, that's something left for madder minds to translate. But I imagine you understand the mutability of names by now, yes? As for why I've interrupted your rediscovery of the Beast's hunger… well, you might say I have a business proposition for you."

"Is that so?"

"Oh yes. It so happens that your presence here could prove advantageous. By now I know this… extension of yourself has no ability to traverse the playgrounds that Bill has created. Perhaps your true body could manage it, but then your true body's currently confined to your home dimension - and the size of a planet, but there you go. More importantly, I know you've realized that the universe is much vaster than you suspect, and that there are beings far greater than even you out there: you mean to feast on them and steal their power, to diablerize them just as Cappadocius planned to devour God himself… but you'll never reach them without my help."

"So I am forced to once again make a pact with the Infernal. Very well then. If you are to be my Kupala in this new world, so be it: what do you want in exchange?"

"A simple matter: all I wish is for you to pit your current body against a certain entity, a Shapeshifter. This being is young, untested, doubtlessly unprepared for the trials ahead, but dangerous nonetheless; you know better than I do the might of a Shapeshifter without limits on his powers. I wish for you to do battle with him, to hone him for the struggles that he will face in the world that lies beyond this."

"He is your… childer?"

"Hardly."

"Apprentice, then?"

"Not exactly."

"A pawn, perhaps? Someone you are grooming for something greater, in any event?"

"You could say that. I've no doubt it will be an arduous battle, and this proxy body of yours may not survive it, but if you agree to put every last atom of your strength into battling the Shapeshifter – and if he survives in spite of it – you will have an entire _multiverse_ of gods on which to feast."

"That is all?"

"That's all. So, what do you say?"

Tzimisce rumbled for a moment, agonized faces oozing in and out of his shapeless mass.

"We have a deal," he said at last. "But before we begin, I must know: what is this Shapeshifter's name?"

Nyarlathotep's face split into a hideous grin.

"Dipper Pines," he replied.

* * *

A/N: Up next...

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Zmw nrtsg qfhg hzev gsv wznmvw uiln svoo


	22. By Blinded Eyes And Lifeless Sight

A/N: Ow.

Sorry for the delay, ladies and gents: this month has been murder. Suffice it to say that this isn't the first time I've had to move house, but it's the first time I've had to move an entire _workplace._ It's been a stressful and distinctly painful couple of weeks, and my arms still feel like rubber... but at least I got the chapter done. In the meantime, I cannot express just how grateful for all the views, reviews, favourites and follows I've received in the meantime.

 **Hourglass Cipher:** To answer your question, Mr Carter is Nyarlathotep; you've already met him in previous chapters, suffice to say.

 **Fantasy Fan 223:** Mr Carter's playing his own game at this point; he's neutral only in the sense that he's acting in his own interests. Also, Bill isn't the only trickster on the field: after all, Carter/Nyarlathotep himself is comparable to Hermes in many ways. Plus, there's more than one kind of "hero" in Carter's game.

 **Lizzie2145:** Glad you like the chapter! I'm very happy I can keep things entertaining even through all the grisly details.

 **a very angry ravage:** He might be, but Tzimisce's eating habits might prevent that; the portal closed on her neck, but the vampire-god got to eat the rest... including something that even Bill might have trouble replacing.

 **Kraven the Hunter:** I've gotta say, I _love_ your ideas for Bill's punishment - I can only hope I live up to their standard. Plus, I simply have to use "Slimvice" at some point...

 **Northgalus2002:** Ooh, yes. Other powers are indeed ready to help.

 **Carcer14:** True, true - everyone in the Mystery Team played their own small role in igniting Weirdmageddon, and as a result, they must unite to stop it. I agree wholeheartedly, and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

 **LoyalTheorist:** Yep, there's going to be a good focus on Robbie's flaws this chapter. Hope you enjoy it!

 **skywalkerchick1138:** Yeah, I love that film and listening to the soundtrack always helps get me in the mood to write action sequences. I'm glad you liked the chapter, and as always, I hope this one lives up to the standards set. Also... yes, you will get to catch up with Stan and Ford soon. Very soon...

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls and the Cthulhu Mythos are not mine

* * *

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Ovhhlm Lmv: Wl Mlg Kivhh Gsv Girxphgvi'h Yvihvip Yfgglm.  
Ovhhlm Gdl: Gsv Ylwb Rh Mlg Z Gvnkov, Zmw Gsv Wvzw Ziv Mlg Hzxivw.  
Ovhhlm Gsivv: Zmtvi Rh Nliv Kldviufo Gszm Wvhkzri... Uli Mld.

* * *

Not for the first time that night, Robbie cringed away from the thunderous din of amplified music and wailing police sirens, and huddled a little deeper into the nest of moth-eaten blankets that had been his bed for the past few weeks.

 _Just another night in the City of the Dead,_ he told himself, trying not to whimper too loudly.

By now, he knew full well that hiding wouldn't help him: the eyeball guards would always find him if they wanted a scapegoat. Nights like this always ended with him face-down in the gutter, face stinging from about a dozen fresh bruises, his mouth awash with blood, his bones splintering in every direction. And if he was lucky, they'd leave it at that; if not, they'd think of something _worse_ to do to him.

But all the same, he went through the same ritual as always. After all, what else could he do, other than pull the blanket over his head? He'd done the same thing when he was little, hiding his face under a blanket whenever he thought there were boogeymen lurking around the house at night, believing – in that mad, fervent way that only little kids could – that the monsters wouldn't be able to see him if he couldn't see them. Well, as a teenager he'd finally learned his lesson: the monsters would see you no matter how little you saw of them.

After all, Robbie was _blind_ and the eyeball guards certainly didn't have any trouble finding him.

All he could do was sit tight and wait until morning – or whatever passed for morning in this bleak, freezing hell of a city. If the guards had decided not to take an interest in him, he could relax and go about gathering supplies for the next miserable night: he could beg for food, steal it, or even hunt for it, then eat what he needed and stockpile as much as he could.

And if the guards _had_ taken an interest that terrible night, well, he'd just have to find his way back into the sewers, bind his wounds as best as he could, help himself to his secret stash of pilfered food, drink what little rain dripped in through the stormwater drains, and wait until either the pain receded or the sewers flooded again.

All in all, he didn't have too many options. He hadn't had many options for…

For…

Dear god, how long _had_ he been here? It could have been anywhere from a month to twelve, if not _more_ ; for all he knew, he'd been trapped out here on the streets for years on end. Certainly it had felt like years, what with all those long nights and interminable days, and every single one of them had been spent cowering, begging, stealing, scavenging, and doing whatever he could to stay alive. Lord only knew he'd done things he wasn't proud of, and most of the time it hadn't really been worth it: more often than not, he got the distinct impression that the guards only gave him leave to do those ugly, ugly things because they got a kick out of watching him humiliate himself for food and shelter. Besides, no matter how low he went, no matter how much he earned, he was always cold and hungry the next day.

He couldn't guess how long it had been, but he could easily guess that the weeks had taken a toll. Of course, he had no way of seeing the damage for himself, but he could tell from the disgusted gasps of passers-by that he looked like microwaved death on toast, even with his empty eye-sockets covered with a blindfold.

Because he hadn't had his head shaven like the other workers of the city, his hair had grown back by now, but he could tell by the itching that it was now starting to hang down over his ears like a greasy curtain; his face still felt distorted and misaligned from all the times the guards had kicked him in the head, and his nose was so crooked it was a marvel he could still smell anything. He'd lost teeth out here on the streets: some had broken after countless pummellings against the paving-stones, but most had just fallen out of their own accord before Robbie had finally managed to find a toothbrush and toothpaste after hours fossicking in the communal dump. Of course, he never managed to find any soap or deodorant out there, so he always stank of month-old B.O., rotting meat and old, sour vomit… along with other smells too revolting to describe. He'd lost weight, too: by now, even his old skinny jeans would have looked baggy on him, and the tattered old coat and baggy tracksuit pants he'd stolen from the dump hung off him like elephant skin. He could feel his ribs pressed tight against his skin – passers-by could play him like a xylophone if they wanted to.

Would anyone from Gravity Falls have recognized him? It didn't seem likely. Even the fact that he needed a _walking stick_ nowwould have bamboozled them.

But then, it wasn't as if anyone was going to just show up and rescue him. No, he didn't have many options other than to keep on foraging for food and hope that he could somehow keep his stash properly stocked.

In fact, the only thing he _did_ have at this point was company.

Somehow, Zombie Tambry, Zombie Wendy, Zombie Thompson, Zombie Nate, Zombie Lee and the Zombie Pines Twins were still around. He might have lost self-respect and all but the vaguest hope for the future, but he hadn't lost the zombies _or_ his ability to control them; they still followed his commands without hesitation, and still helped him in whatever way they could. If anything, they seemed even more obedient than before, for now they followed without having to be ordered: more than once, he'd been forced to leave his alleyway and forgotten to call for the zombies to follow, only to turn around and bump squarely into Zombie Tambry, following him without hesitation.

More to the point, the zombies were still left undisturbed despite the city's apparently bottomless appetite for necrofuel; nonetheless, Robbie was careful to keep them hidden while he was asleep, packed well out of sight behind a litter of garbage. They still reeked of decay, but they didn't seem to be rotting any further, even after weeks spent in the cold, damp alleyways and the oily humidity of the sewers. He couldn't see them, of course, but he could tell by touch that they were recognizable – for all the good it did.

The zombies couldn't defend him: all corpses designated necrofuel had been hardwired into docility, so once again, they couldn't fight, no matter how hard Robbie tried to teach them. And of course, they still couldn't read that mysterious note to him…

…but at least they were around to ease the loneliness.

Loneliness was the rule of the world these days. Blind as he was, even he could tell that the city was changing around him, leaving him behind, forcing him even further into the fringes: every day, a new building would spring out of the ground; every day, new systems of currency and work were invented just to make life a little harder on the human populace; every day, the workers would have another reason to take out their frustrations on him.

There were new factories, new complexes, new powers granted to law enforcement, but never anything positive. There was supposedly a nightclub for the Henchmaniacs booming in the heart of the city, a place where the workers could observe the luxury within but never partake of it. There were means of population control, blending terror with indulgence: the eyeball guards were always brutal and unforgiving regardless of the circumstances but from time to time, a merchant would be allowed to peddle his wares to the workers, "covertly" offering everything from bootleg hooch to morphine – in exchange for supply tokens, indentured servitude, or favours that ran the gamut from disgusting to downright suicidal.

And of course, there were rumours. Every day, there was a new story making the rounds through the city, and though few people wanted to actually _talk_ to Robbie, they weren't too shy about running their mouths as they walked past him. Easily the most popular of the rumours were the whisperings of a heavenly realm somewhere beyond the city, a utopia where the ultra-rare human servants who'd earned Bill's favour were allowed to dwell in comfort as a reward for exemplary service. Supposedly, places like this were accessible only through special gateways – and there was one right on the outskirts of the City of the Dead, on a tiny outstretched causeway of mouldering bodies extending from the corpse moat into the void that surrounded them. True, nobody had seen it no matter how far into the moat their assignments had sent them, but that didn't stop the rumours from spreading.

More than once, Robbie had entertained wild fantasies about somehow making his way to the corpse moat, finding that gateway and escaping once and for all with the zombies in tow. But no matter how well he tried to convince himself, he never went through with it.

How could he escape when he couldn't even see where he was going? He'd learned the pattern of the streets only by hard-won experience, and the corpse moat was uncharted territory. And more to the point, the eyeball guards would never let him get that far: they'd recognize him just by the shuffle in his walk, and all those zombies following him around would make him about as invisible as a car-crash. And besides, it wasn't as if things were any better out there, were they? Even if he could find his way to Bill's private heaven – assuming it existed – the people there would probably sell him out just to save their reservations.

No, as bad as it was in the City of the Dead, it was better than facing death and worse out in the World of Weirdmageddon.

In fact, looked at a certain way, the city wasn't too bad. Okay, it was miserable as hell, but it was a habitable kind of miserable that wouldn't actually kill him; he'd learned that much by now. Here, there were warm hideaways at the bottom of the sewer network; here, there was food, some of it almost appetising; here, his friends would never leave him.

So, as the sirens passed him by once again, Robbie drew the tattered blankets over his head and tried to get back to sleep.

* * *

Sometime later, Robbie awake to a stinging pain in his side. Someone was kicking him squarely in the ribs.

Admittedly, this wasn't the first time he'd awoken to somebody inflicting violence on his defenceless body; he had more than enough bruises to prove his status as a professional target a dozen times over, and by now he'd worked out an almost-perfect routine for avoiding further beatings. So, he immediately curled himself into a ball, tucking his head down as low as it could possibly go just in case his attacker decided to go for that next.

But the next attack never came: instead, a voice from above him whispered, "Rise and shine, sleepyhead. It's time to open your eyes and face the day. Wakey-wakey eggs-n'-bakey, come and get 'em while they're hot. The invisible bugler's playing reveille, little blind soldier."

There was a pause, as Robbie hastily reviewed the voice. With new arrivals streaming into the city every day, there were always strangers ready to kick the crap out of him, but none of them spoke to him like this; usually, the preamble to the beatdown was rarely more detailed than a few expletives and the occasional "hold his arms!" Meanwhile, the eyeball guards still couldn't speak, even after all the changes the City of the Dead had undergone: if they ever felt like saying something to him, they'd drag some terrified citizen along to announce the sentence, and none of them sounded even remotely like _this_ particular stranger.

Nobody here could have a voice this warm and jovial; nobody alive in the City of the Dead could speak in such dulcet, honeyed tones… and nobody could find a way to make that urbane voice sound so inexplicably _disturbing._

Who could this be?

As if in answering, the stranger kicked him in the side again. "You know I'm not going to leave you alone until you're sitting up and paying attention, Robbie," he said.

Robbie sighed, and began the long, awkward process of hauling himself upright. Eventually, he managed to force himself into a sitting position and point himself in the direction of the stranger's voice.

"Who are you?" he croaked.

"A friend."

"I don't have any friends," Robbie half-lied.

"Oh _diddums,"_ said the stranger, teasingly. "You don't need to lie about the zombies, if that's what you're worried about. This might sound hard to believe, but I'm here to help you, Robbie."

Robbie's eyebrows knit in consternation. "But why? Who are you? Apart from a friend, I mean. What's your name?"

"In this neck of the woods, they call me Mr Carter. Everywhere else… well, that's another story for another day. As for why, I'm doing a favour for a business partner, the Axolotl."

"The _who?"_

"Let's just say he tried to send you a message some time ago. Trouble is, he didn't have enough time to deliver the letter in person: by the time his messenger found you, you were already minus a working pair of eyes. Long story short, the Axolotl is reuniting the zodiac under his banner, including you: he wants you on your feet and ready to take part in the single most audacious act of insurrection this misbegotten little reality's ever experienced."

Robbie took a deep breath. "You've completely lost me, man."

"Axolotl's going to war, Robbie," Mr Carter explained. "He's bringing the fight to Bill Cipher, and it's going to be the zodiac who serve on the front lines. I didn't call you a little blind soldier just for the fun of it: like it or not, you're part of an army, and I'm here to ensure that you're ready for battle."

There was a long pause as Robbie silently considered this.

Because he'd had no reason to laugh for what felt like years, it took a while for him to recognize the sensation rippling through his body. In fact, it started as a cough; but then, as the seconds ticked by, the cough became a chuckle, the chuckle became a snickering, the snickering turned to guffawing, the guffawing finally built to laughter… and without warning, he was howling, shrieking, _roaring_ with frenzied, hysterical laughter.

"Right!" Robbie cackled helplessly. "Yeah _right!_ You're here looking for soldiers, and the first recruit you went after was the blind homeless guy! Good one, man. I mean, I _almost_ believed you when you said you were looking for the zodiac; you actually had me when you said that this Axey-whatever guy was going to war against Bill, but then you said _I'd_ be doing the fighting!" He hooted with laughter for another minute, gradually winding down into an awkward silence. "Seriously, though," he said at last. "Next time you try and mess with my head, try something a bit more believable, man."

Mr Carter sighed deeply. "Let me guess… you think I'm working for the Henchmaniacs. Am right?"

"Wouldn't be the first time they've pulled something like this: everyone in town's heard rumours about people getting pranked by a Henchmaniac. Or maybe you're just some weird guy who gets off on cheap scams, I don't know and I don't care-"

"Oh, but you should," said Mr Carter. "Here's the thing, Robbie: if I was a Henchmaniac or _working_ for the Henchmaniacs, I wouldn't have made up anything about taking the fight to Bill. And if I was "just some weird guy," I wouldn't even have the inclination to lie to you."

"Why's that?"

"Because as far as the rest of this city is concerned, you're not important enough to be lied to. You're a blind homeless punching bag."

"Oh great, more personal abuse. Way to reel me in, man. I'm really interested in listening to you now. You really don't put much effort into these pranks, do you?"

There was a deathly silence.

"I beg your pardon?" said Mr Carter, his voice eerily calm.

"Well, I'm just saying, I've seen better pranks pulled off by twelve-year-old kids."

"Is that right?"

Robbie hesitated. Given that he hadn't had much practice at talking to people since he'd gone blind, he wasn't the best at reading an audience, but even he couldn't help noticing the sudden change in atmosphere. Mr Carter hadn't raised his voice; he hadn't even said anything mildly aggressive… but Robbie could somehow tell that the man was slowly building towards a towering rage.

"Considering you haven't really seen any of my "pranks" in action, you seem to be _very_ free with your opinion of them," Carter continued icily.

"Dude, I didn't mean it like that, I'm just saying that-"

"You're not _saying_ anything. You're being an idiot: you've just enjoyed a laugh, so you've managed to cough up a few ragged chunks of bravado in the process. Considering I came here to help you, I think I'm well within my rights to be offended."

An ice-cold hand suddenly clamped down hard on Robbie's uninjured left shoulder, and he knew at once that whoever Mr Carter was, he couldn't possibly be human. Normal human beings didn't have hands so deathly-cold; normal humans didn't have fingernails that jabbed and raked like scorpion stingers; normal humans didn't have skin that writhed and crawled as if it were made of millions of interlocking tentacles.

By now already starting to feel the familiar terror seeping back into his veins, Robbie tried for diplomacy: "Look, Mr Henchmaniac, sir-"

" _ **I am not a Henchmaniac,"**_ Mr Carter hissed, his suddenly inhuman voice echoing through alien dimensions and leaving white-hot trails on Robbie's badly-mangled sanity. _**"I am**_ **worse** _ **than the Henchmaniacs."**_

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I get the message, I-"

" _ **I am Nyarlathotep, the Black Pharaoh, the Crawling Chaos, the Herald of Azathoth… and that is the nearest you'll ever get to hearing my**_ **true** _ **name without having your consciousness liquefy. I am here to help you, as strange as that may seem: if I was playing a prank on you specifically, you would currently be lying helpless in an operating theatre as surgeons removed your brain and condemned it to a virtual eternity in the silent darkness of a sealed canister… and there are worse fates I could arrange. The only reason you are still alive and sane is because**_ **I am not playing a prank on you.** _ **Now take this matter seriously or I am going to demonstrate just how far the human intestinal tract can unravel. Do I make myself clear?"**_

"Yessir."

" _ **Excellent.**_ **Now…"** Mr Carter/Nyarlathtotep cleared his throat, and suddenly his voice was back to normal. "As I was saying, the Axolotl sent me to get you back on your feet: from now on, you're officially a soldier fighting for the salvation of reality itself. Note that I didn't say " _preservation_ of reality," and that's mainly because reality as you once knew it is officially dead, and I sincerely hope that encapsulates the odds that are currently against you. Succeeding in this mission will result in outcomes that even the Axolotl himself cannot fully predict; _failing_ will result in Bill condemning you to a fate a thousand times more hellish than your current predicament. Any questions?"

In spite of himself, Robbie almost managed another laugh. "You're really not interested in selling me the idea, are you?"

"I was sent here to prepare you for the trials ahead; giving you false hope – or any hope at all for that matter – wasn't in the job description."

"Fair enough. So… how can I be a soldier? I mean, are you gonna give me new eyes, or help me get out of here, or-"

"No."

"No?"

"Again, I said "prepare," not "hold your hand every step of the journey." I'm a trickster, not a babysitter. If you want to get out of this city, young man, you're going to have to do it under your own steam."

Robbie groaned. "And how am I supposed to do that?" he burst out. "I'm _blind_! I can barely walk anymore, I'm useless in a fight, I'm outnumbered by the guards, and I'm still recovering from the last few dozen beatdowns. Oh, and did I mention that _I'M BLIND?!"_

"Blind and armed with the power to control the dead."

"And I can't use them to hurt anyone, genius! Bill made sure of that, and even if I could use them to attack people, _I still can't see anything!_ What good does control over zombies do me right now?"

"Hurt?" Mr Carter/Nyarlathotep echoed. "Curious terminology. I'm pretty sure that Bill's alterations make it impossible for the zombies to _attack_ anyone. As for hurting people… well, accidents happen. Didn't your zombies accidentally knock a few people over while you were leading them on that charge into the alleyways?"

"So what if they knocked some people over? Even if I could make the same trick work again, it doesn't mean anything if I can't actually see what I'm doing. Look, just face the facts: the zombies are useless. Plain and simple."

"If that's the case, Robbie, then why are you keeping these ones around?"

"…what?"

"It's a perfectly reasonable question, my friend: if the zombies are that useless, then why are you dragging this little band of them wherever you go? You've no use for them as bodyguards, and keeping track of them will only slow you down in the long run, so why keep them?"

"Well… they're company. They're the only company I've got."

"Even though they can't speak? Even though they only react according to your will? Even though they're just animated meat? Animated meat suspended in a rather odoriferous state of decay, I might add."

Robbie opened his mouth to reply, only to realize that his only response sounded _really_ pathetic in light of everything he'd just heard. For about five extremely crowded seconds, he wracked his brain for any good reason he might have for keeping the zombies around other than pure unreasoning sentiment; finding none, he could only limply mumble out his original reply, trying vainly to sound more assertive than he actually was.

"They're my friends," he said. "They're all that's left of my friends, anyway."

Robbie got the distinct impression that Nyarlathotep was smirking at him.

"And if I told you that these decomposing automata are just replicas of your companions, would that change anything? Would you treat your little brigade of zombies differently, knowing that the _real_ Tambry, Wendy, Thompson, Nate, Lee, Mabel _and_ Dipper were all still alive somewhere beyond this city?"

"For one thing, I wouldn't believe you."

"Good. You're learning."

"But even if they were… well, they're out there. There's no way to reach them; I mean, even if I could get out of this city, there's no guarantee I'll ever see them again. The zombies… well, they're not much, but they're all I have."

"Let me guess, you're waiting for your parents to turn up as zombies as well, and then you'll have a happy family of the dead to keep you company here on the streets. Well, as touching as that sounds, I'm afraid we're somewhat at odds here, and it seems I have a very obvious means of clearing things up. If you'll excuse me…"

There was a pause, as Mr Carter's footsteps swiftly receded into the distance.

"Where are you going?" Robbie asked.

"Oh, not far! I just have some garbage to dispose of…"

From the far end of the alleyway, there was a rustle of shifting cardboard and other debris, as Mr Carter began hauling something heavy out from under the trash pile… and suddenly, Robbie's heart skipped a beat as he realized what he was doing.

"ZOMBIES!" he shrieked. "GET AWAY FROM HIM, QUICKLY!"

Suddenly, the relative quiet of the alleyway was broken by the sounds of several zombies hurriedly clawing their way out of the trash-heap and shuffling into formation next to Robbie… but he could tell, long before he heard the telltale cackle from Mr Carter, that he'd acted too late. Even though he couldn't see the zombies lined up alongside him, he knew he was missing one.

"Aha," said Mr Carter. "This is _Tambry_ isn't it? Your favourite cuddle-bunny, isn't that right? Yes, of course, of course. What would be the most entertaining means of disposal, I wonder?"

" _Let her go!"_ Robbie screamed.

"Hmm. Don't think I will. Maybe I'll eat her, one morsel of flesh at a time."

"Let her go, please! I'll give you anything you want, _anything!"_

"What could you possibly offer me? You've already made it clear that you're not interested in cooperating: you're not going to serve in the war, so you're of no use to me. And, as you said, you've no powers worth harnessing so there's no point trying to harness what little potential you might possess. As such, you have nothing to negotiate with… or to put it another way, you're _worth_ nothing."

"Then why are you still here? Why are you doing this?!"

"Because I can, of course. I've travelled a long way to get here, and I feel I've earned a little compensation for all the precious time you've wasted. So, if you don't mind, I have a feast to enjoy. This little piggy went to market…"

From Carter's general direction, there was a guttural snarl too deep to emerge from any human throat, and a loud _crunch_ of splintering bone.

"Ah… ladyfingers."

"Stop it!" Robbie screamed. "Stop it, stop it, _stop it!"_

"Oh pipe down, you. You've still got six zombies to keep you company. Besides, it's not as if this one's your _real_ girlfriend, is it? She's just another living corpse, incapable of returning your feelings; the relationship you share with her exists solely in your head."

There was another brutal _chomp_ , as Mr Carter chewed off another one of Tambry's fingers. "Anyway," he continued, swallowing the digit whole, "Once Zombie Tambry's been eaten away, you'll be able to enjoy another imaginary relationship with Zombie Wendy, won't you?"

"Leave her or alone or _I'll kill you!"_ And with that, Robbie actually got to his feet and began shambling forward as quickly as his fractured kneecaps could allow, swinging his walking stick in wild, violent arcs as he tottered towards the source of that sneering voice.

"And how do you propose to do that? Scant moments ago, you told me you were useless in a fight."

"Shut up!" Robbie howled, furiously threshing the air with his walking stick. "I'll find a way somehow!"

"I believe that falls under the heading of "big talk and nothing else." Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a lot of fingers to eat and no terror-stricken blood to wash it down with, so I'm just going to make do with what little ichor I can juice from this walking cadaver's internal organs."

"You know what? When I get my hands on you, I swear I'm gonna rip that stupid-looking red tie off your scrawny neck and ram it so far down your throat, you'll look like you've grown a tail – and that's _before_ I rip it out from between your cheeks and strangle you with it!"

There was a pause, and then Mr Carter began to laugh.

"Think that's funny, do ya? I haven't even gotten to what I'll do with this walking stick!"

If anything, Mr Carter laughed even harder, this time accompanied by mocking applause. "Oh Robbie," he chortled. "Oh poor dimwitted, angst-saturated, rebel-wannabe Robbie. Once again, you've let the most obvious thing in the world slip past you: first the muffin graffiti and now this."

"Okay, first thing's first: it's a _mushroom cloud,_ not a muffin! Second, what have I let slip past me?"

"You're blind, yes?"

"Glad to see you were listening the first fifty times, jackass."

"Then how do you know I'm wearing a red tie?"

Behind his blindfold, Robbie blinked.

"I... I don't know," he said limply. "It… it just seemed obvious. I don't know why, but it just seemed really, really obvious."

"And when did this fact occur to you?"

"…just a few seconds ago. Why?"

"Because it only occurred when I was eye to eye with this animated corpse," Mr Carter purred.  
"Zombie Tambry is currently staring directly at me: her eyes are a little bit worse for wear, but she is most definitely looking at my tie. Are you starting to grasp the implications?"

"You mean I can _see through her eyes?"_

"Surely you've noticed how quickly the zombies respond to your commands? In the last few days, they've been following you without having to be told, honing in on your psychic presence, even responding to your subconscious impulses. You're sending out signals, Robbie, forming connections with the energies that animate these corpses without meaning to… and somewhere along the line, you've started receiving information in return. I mean, you went to all the trouble of hiding your zombie friends under all this old cardboard and junk, but how could you have been certain that they were properly hidden if you couldn't see what you were doing? There's only so much that touch can tell, believe me. And you're capable of more, _much_ more than that… if you only put your mind to it."

"But-"

" _ **Concentrate,"**_ Mr Carter hissed, his voice once again taking on the same inhuman roar that had almost stopped Robbie's heart a moment ago.

"But what am I-"

"Stretch out with your mind. Focus on the zombies. You know where they are: Tambry is standing next to me, and the rest are standing beside you. With a little imagination, you can guess what they might be looking at. Envision the world through their eyes, now. Reach out to the zombies and imagine seeing through their eyes."

"I-I can't-"

"Yes you can, Robbie. The tools you need are all there in your head: it's up to you to use them. Now, _**concentrate!"**_

The word, rippling with the mind-pummelling non-sound of Nyarlathotep's voice, tore through Robbie's brain: suddenly, concentration on the matter at hand meant more than anything else in the world, and though he couldn't quite grasp why, something in the back of his head told him that disobeying the terrible voice would mean a horrible death – and so much worse. Something about those hissing, roaring tones seemed to cut right through his conscious mind and start eating into his brain, interfacing directly with his most basic, primitive impulses and hammering hard on the "flight" instinct. He was dimly aware that there was nothing to be afraid of, that what he had heard was a voice and nothing more, that Carter/Nyarlathotep wouldn't hurt him as long as he was still useful, but details like these might as well have been shouted from another planet for all the good they did: the voice cut through all those logical details and forced him onwards, the animalistic fear spurring him into a level of concentration that he'd never yet experienced…

And then, just as Robbie was beginning to wonder if he was concentrating his way into an embolism, the darkness that had shrouded his senses for the last few months was suddenly split by a piercing beam of light, brighter than anything he'd seen in the days before blindness. After so much time spent without seeing, the sensory backlash was agonizing; shrieking in pain, Robbie instinctively covered his eyes with his hand – only to find that he was still wearing his blindfold, and still in possession of two empty, useless sockets. He wasn't perceiving light through his own eyes, but through the eyes of others.

A moment later, the pain subsided and the light dimmed until the mad onslaught of information finally resolved itself into recognizable images – seven sets of images suddenly imposed on the blankness that had replaced ordinary eyesight. He saw rough concrete walls, stacked high with piles of old garbage; he saw pallid skies awash with slate-grey clouds; he saw a putrid concrete floor stained with blood and puke and bits of decomposing flesh and god only knew what else; he saw a swarthy, dark-skinned man in a red coat and a tailored black suit, his jacket just open enough to reveal a red tie; he saw the zombies – Tambry, Wendy, Thompson, Nate, Lee, Mabel, Dipper… and he saw himself, staring back in astonishment at the zombies who now saw the world in his stead.

After so many months resigned to the fact that he was blind for good, Robbie could see again.

"Oh my god," he whispered.

Had he still possessed working tear ducts, he would have cried. As it was, all he could do was shudder in relief and amazement as he took in the world through new eyes.

Granted, it was a little disorienting: not only did he now have seven pairs of eyes to see through at once, but none of them were from his perspective, making even the simplest motions seem weird and disconnected; it was like seeing himself through a CCTV camera. As such, it wasn't until he actually ordered the zombies to all line up next to him that he achieved something close to normal human vision, and even then it was still fractured into a fly's eye view of the world.

But all that was meaningless next to the simple fact that _he could see again._

* * *

Almost twenty minutes went by in complete silence: for most of it, Robbie was just testing his newfound vision; he examined how the eyes of the zombies perceived colour and dimension, checking how his multifaceted vision recognized perspective; he practised shutting down certain aspects of his new sight, adjusting to the task of seeing through a single pair of eyes before expanding the view once more; he even did his best to acclimatize to the disorienting sensation of seeing through multiple eyes in motion, ordering the zombies to circle him at length as he tried to make sense of the sensory input.

"How did this happen?" he mumbled at last. "How did I get this power?"

"Oh, remembered I'm here, have you?" said Mr Carter with a smirk.

"Grow up. Now, how did I get this power?"

"Easy. Bill gave it to you, remember? He empowered you to shepherd the dead, and so you did."

"But he wouldn't have let me _see_ like this, not after he blinded me!"

"Of course not. As I said, he wanted you to be a shepherd and nothing more… but the power he gave you has developed, metamorphosed into something far grander than Bill Cipher could ever have imagined. And this is only the beginning: there are greater horizons you can reach, Robbie, entire vistas of potential yet untapped. As incredible as it might seem, _you're only at the threshold."_

"But that still doesn't explain how things changed in the first place. I mean, Bill's basically supposed to be a god, right? How could this happen when he's in control of literally everything?"

"Because he's not, of course," said Mr Carter smugly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Even Bill has weaknesses. Outside the Mindscape, there are limits to his vision, and because of that, the energies he's ushered into this dimension sometimes behave in ways that he doesn't intend. It's a million-to-one chance, but that's the thing about Weirdness: by nature, it is chaos in its purest form, a force of raw, unpredictable unreality. Even in the hands of an entity as powerful as the Beast With Just One Eye, pure Weirdness still sometimes slips the leash… and that tiny quirk has allowed your powers to grow and change beyond the boundaries Bill set for you."

"But why me?"

"I admit, that confused even me at first. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure if Axolotl knows the full details, so I conducted my own little investigation into the forces that currently suffuse your body… and under all that Weirdness in your body, I found the leftovers of Stanford Pines' failed ritual."

"The _Wheel?_ But how could that have changed anything? Like you said, it failed."

"Nonetheless, you and the rest of the zodiac were exposed to a very old and powerful form of ritual magic – not long enough to seriously alter you, but just long enough to leave an imprint on your souls. And when concentrated Weirdness and ancient magic met in your ragged little body, the million-to-one-chance suddenly became one-to-one. And lo and behold, a miracle was born unto this dying Earth."

A Cheshire cat grin spit his face in two, revealing a mouthful of needle-sharp fangs too long and too narrow to be human – a disturbing sight, considering that Carter's teeth had looked perfectly normal a moment ago.

"It took a while for the changes to take effect, of course," Mr Carter continued. "As long as Bill kept an eye on his precious captives, the Weirdness behaved exactly as he willed. But eventually, he lost interest: a new toy had caught his attention, and the game he played with that toy demanded more and more of his time, until he couldn't be bothered keeping tabs on his other playthings… and in his absence, things changed. Curses become blessings; temporary gifts become weapons; energy from surrounding environments was absorbed by individuals and expressed as new powers."

"Oh." Robbie thought for a moment, and then his eyes widened in shock. "But shouldn't that mean the rest of the zodiac have powers as well?"

"Exactly! You see why Axolotl wants them on his side, don't you? Imagine how your friends have changed since then! Some were empowered to serve a function, just as you were, and have begun to grow beyond that function just as you have. Others have been in certain environments for so long that the Weirdness of the playgrounds has simply earthed itself in their bodies, empowered them without even meaning to. Imagine the abilities they have now! Imagine how powerful they might grow!"

Robbie took a deep breath, and tried his best not to let his knees buckle; it wasn't easy – he'd heard too much that day, and after god only knew how long he'd spent on the streets, he wasn't used to conversations that lasted this long to begin with. "So… the others… they're all alive out there?" he asked softly. "They've all got powers of their own?"

"I think you'll find that for yourself well enough," said Mr Carter, his smile wider than ever. "And on that note, it's time I continued onwards." He turned to leave, casually pushing errant zombies out of the way as he did so.

"Wha- where are you going?"

"I told you before, Robbie: I was here to get you back on your feet, and by the looks of things, you're managing that well enough on your own. So, if you'll excuse me, I have phone calls to make and other members of the zodiac to initiate."

"But I don't know how I'm going to get out of here! I don't even know how to fight using the zombies!"

"Like I said, I'm not here to hold your hand."

"But-"

"Look, I know the odds are daunting, and given your condition, I don't blame you at all. You're not intelligent, you're not imaginative, you're not especially knowledgeable, you were an inveterate coward even before you ended up on the streets, you've got all the lovability of a dead lamprey, and you've got more broken bones than functional muscles. Also, personality-wise, you're a sliding scale of faux-iconoclast rebel without a clue and simmering puddle of pointless angst. Plus, you spent a good chunk of the summer being alternatively defeated and rescued by a child four years younger than you and barely half your height. So yes, the odds are stacked against you… but believe it or not, you have everything you need to escape right here in this alleyway… or should I say, your left coat pocket?"

 _The letter!_

Heart hammering, Robbie fumbled with the pocket, hoping against hope that the rainwater and sewerage hadn't touched the folded paper sitting there. The letter had been sitting there ever since he'd first found the coat, stashed away ever since he realized that there was no way in hell that anyone was going to read it for him; more than once, he'd woken up to find unfriendly hands going through his pockets for supply tokens – what if someone had stolen the letter on one of those nights? What would they have done with it, though? Would they have simply thrown it away, or would they have shown it to the guards in return for a reward? Did the guards know everything about Axolotl's letter already? Were they lying in wait even now? Had he regained his sight only so he could see the eyeball guards preparing to blind him again?

Twelve heartstopping seconds later, his questing fingers finally found the letter, and he was so overwhelmed with relief that it took Robbie a moment or so to remember that he actually needed to read the thing sooner or later. So, he unfolded the paper and went to work.

 _Dear Robbie,_ the letter read.

 _I don't know if this letter will reach you in time, but I have to try – for your sake and the sake of all humanity. This is the first time I've given such thorough directions, and I'm risking discovery in the process, but I'm afraid this is my only option at this point: Bill has something very nasty in store for you, and I need to move quickly before he returns to this playground._

"A little late for that," Robbie muttered bitterly, reminding himself to give the messenger a good kick up the ass the next time he saw him.

 _For now,_ the letter continued, _make sure nobody sees you reading, and destroy this message once you've memorised the contents._ _The situation may seem impossible to deal with, but I promise you that you have everything you need to escape: the portal leading out of this city is directly south of the necrofuel induction dock, five hundred yards into the corpse moat. You will recognize it easily enough:_ look through the eyes of the dead.

 _Oh, and don't make the mistake of thinking that you're defenceless: You know how to reanimate the dead – with effort, you might very well be able to claim them from other corpse-shepherds. True, you can't make the zombies into soldiers, but you_ can _make them into weapons._

 _Put one way, if a brick is thrown at someone, you can't very well say that the brick_ actually _attacked someone: use the zombies the same way. Battering rams, bludgeons, stampedes, simple mechanisms._

 _Put another way…_

 _Have you ever seen army ants build?_

"What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?" Robbie asked.

But Nyarlathotep had gone.

In the end, Robbie could only offer a world-weary sigh, sit down heavily, and wonder what he was going to do next.

It took about half an hour before he realized what the letter had meant.

* * *

A day later, eyeball guards over the city began receiving reports of zombies inexplicably vanishing on route to the power plant.

Nobody was sure how it happened, for after months of uninterrupted necrofuel usage, the sight of zombies marching up and down the lane was so commonplace that few bothered to pay attention to it. A few sharp-eyed souls claimed to have seen zombies simply walking away from their queues at the plant and vanishing into the endless warren of alleyways that Swiss-cheesed the city, but no trace of them was ever found. A few "cooperative elements" from the human populace took a chance and ventured into the sewers, assuming that the missing necrofuel could have been hidden down in the catacombs of the city; few returned alive.

In the days that followed, crowds of zombies could be seen gathering in the city square at odd intervals, refusing to respond to orders from any of their assigned shepherds. For several minutes at a time, they would pace the courtyards in circles, crawl on their hands and knees, perform push-ups and sit-ups, cartwheel and somersault down the lanes, and even perform elaborate goose-steps. Most unusually of all, they seemed to have a common tendency to stand on one another's shoulders, assemble themselves in towers, form human pyramids, and even attempt to walk in such formations. However it happened, the guards were never able to learn their secrets: by the time they arrived on the scene, the zombies had already disassembled, vanishing back into the alleyways without a trace.

And every now and again, a mysterious blindfolded figure in a filth-encrusted coat could be seen peering from the shadows. "Not quick enough," he would mutter occasionally. "They're not balanced yet." And as with the zombies, by the time the guards appeared on the scene, the blindfolded beggar was gone.

Two weeks went by, and gradually the sightings ceased. For the time being, the eyeball guards thought they had seen the last of their troubles – and just as well, for Bill Cipher had not responded for their calls for help.

And then one day, something the size of a greyhound bus stomped out of the alleyways, bound for the corpse moat. A giant, a veritable titan of dead flesh, its body was little more than a mass of interwoven zombies, dozens of reanimated corpses fused together into a set of colossal limbs as powerful as a wrecking ball and almost as indiscriminate; several eyeball guards tried to stop the monster as it strode through the town, thinking that it wouldn't be able to attack them. And technically it didn't: it simply stampeded across them, flattening them under its ponderous bulk and incorporating their crumpled bodies into its mass as it strode on.

Sitting atop the monster on a throne of dead flesh where its head should have been, Robbie Valentino directed the zombie giant down the street, swatting aside cars and pulverizing troop transports with wild swings of its gargantuan fists.

"REVEEEEEEEEEENGE!" he howled triumphantly, as the zombie giant strode onwards, moving inexorably onwards to the corpse moat – and to freedom.

Somewhere in the distance, Nyarlathotep applauded softly and grinned a grin to shame the Cheshire cat. "Atta boy," he said softly. "And this is only the beginning…"

He paused for a moment, studying the figure of zombie giant as it slowly receded over the horizon. Then, reaching into one of the pockets of his coat, he held out a single morbid-looking phone and began dialing a long and complicated number...

"Q! Good to hear from you again, old sport! How's tricks? I know, I know, it's been too long. Who are you playing with this month – Picard or Janeway? Ooh, I wouldn't have seen that coming. No, sad to say this isn't a social call. See, I'm calling on behalf of a client – a non-Outer God client, to be specific. The Axolotl's putting a team together, see, and we need your help…

* * *

A/N: Up next - a new and frightening metamorphosis begins; a pretty monster from the past reappears; the herald makes contact with the Twelfth.

Or, to put it another way:

Gsv mrtsg xzm lmob ozhg hl olmt  
Vevm zugvi zoo'h tlmv dilmt  
Gsv gdl nrtsg bvg vhxzkv wvhkzri:  
Uiln nzwmvhh hkzivw gsilfts nzwmvhh hszivw


	23. A Burden Shared

A/N: Well, I picked a bad time to come down with a cold, ladies and gentlemen. I originally meant to post this about five days ago, but I've been too busy staring at the wall going "uuuuuuurgh" to even think coherently. For now, I can only apologise for the delay, and hope you enjoy the latest chapter.

HouglassCipher: Yeah, I had a lot of fun writing that one. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Kraven the Hunter: You're on a roll with the pomposity-puncturing nicknames; do I have your permission to use them? I can just imagine the reactions of the recipients! Also, love the theory - but of course, only time can tell. One thing I can say is that the situation here is a lot less dire than anticipated...

Northgalus2002: Well, there's another character who was slated to change...

Carcer14: Well, Robbie's been on the streets for quite a while, and after so much time spent running and hiding and being beaten up, he's accumulated quite a store of rage that he's never been able to act on. Now that he actually has eyes to see with and realizes the potential his powers grant him, he's definitely not going to be the same person anymore.

OMAC001: I know, I hope you enjoy this one!

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls still isn't mine, and neither are the crossover elements. The only things that are truly mine are the typos; feel free to report them.

Also, this chapter contains some coarse language from a certain crossover character... and those of you who like prophecies might want to keep an eye out for an uncoded example around the middle...

* * *

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Mlg zoo kilksvxrvh zkkvzi rm xlwv  
Rm gsv nrwwov lu gsv xszkgvi  
Gsvb nzb yv hgldvw

* * *

It was the cold that finally roused Stan from his sleep. A sharp gust of icy wind that chilled him all the way to the marrow, it was enough to shock him into full consciousness.

Eyes creaking open, he sat up, arms flailing aimlessly about for a blanket of some kind. Immediately, several realizations occurred to him at once: firstly, there were no blankets to be found. Secondly, he wasn't lying in a bed as he'd previously thought, but on a hard stone floor with only a rolled-up old coat for a pillow.

Thirdly, he was currently sitting in the middle of a vast shadowy chamber lit only by a handful of guttering torches hung from the walls, most of them far away and barely producing enough light to see by.

 _Ah well,_ he thought, _I've woken up in worse places than this. Compared to jail time in Colombia, this is actually pretty cushy. Question is, how did I get here?_

Stan reviewed his memories of everything that had happened prior to losing consciousness. So far, most of them had felt like they'd been taken straight from a dream: the museum, Self-Loathing, the dream of meeting Ford, and the moment where Self-Loathing had pummelled him unconscious. Next thing he knew, he'd woken up here, freezing cold and with no idea what had brought him here.

Was this another part of the Museum? Was this another one of Bill Cipher's games? Or had it all been a dream that he'd only just awoke from?

And assuming that the museum had been real, then why wasn't he injured? Stan clearly remembered breaking several bones during the beatdown from Self-Loathing, and yet he was completely unharmed _._ Even his clothes were practically untouched; not a drop of blood on them or on the pillow he'd been lying on-

Stan's heart skipped a beat.

The "pillow" he'd been asleep on was a coat, battered, bloodstained and rolled into a makeshift cushion, but still all-too recognizable once he'd unfurled it.

 _Ford's coat._

It took barely half a second for the implications to trickle home.

 _Ford_ had rescued him, had healed him somehow, and brought him here – wherever here was. So, putting aside the questions of how he'd managed to do any of that, where was Ford now? If he could escape whatever prison Bill had left him in _and_ get as far as the Museum, then maybe they could find the others and kick off a jailbreak. Granted, he didn't know what they'd do after that, but it was a start.

"Ford?" he called out. "Where are you?"

No response.

Clambering to his feet, Stan looked around the darkened room, but nothing could be seen other than shadows and polished marble. Fortunately, a flashlight had been helpfully tucked into one of the coat pockets; so, tucking the coat under one arm, he flicked on the light and strode off into the gloom, hoping that wherever Ford had wandered off to, he wasn't far away.

For perhaps a minute, he tiptoed through the dark, softly calling Ford's name as he crept onwards and meeting little more than the echo of his own voice. However, as he crept onwards, he found signs that Ford had indeed been here – and for quite some time: along with the recently-used fireplace and the pile of fresh firewood stacked next to it, the floor was scrawled with calculations, designs, and whole journal entries made entirely of charcoal. And some of the larger spaces of the room were cluttered with bizarre wooden shapes, some models, some machines: there was even what appeared to be an experimental hang-glider sitting on the floor.

 _Yep, it's Ford,_ Stan thought, unable to keep the semi-bemused smile off his face. _Even when he's locked up, the guy can't stop inventing stuff. Question is, w-_

A loud, grinding hiss from perhaps twenty feet ahead of him sliced neatly through Stan's reverie. Someone in the darkness ahead was writing, carving something into the floor with what could only be charcoal – but without any light to guide them by; unless Ford had somehow built a pair of night-vision goggles entirely out of wood, someone else was at work here.

 _Not that it'd be impossible for Ford, but still…_

"Hello?" he whispered.

The grinding paused for a moment, and then continued. This time, however, a voice could be heard; even with the grinding noise heard over it, even with Stan's heartbeat pounding out a Buddy Rich drum solo, there was no mistaking Ford's voice.

"The Judge was the first," he said.

"What?"

"The Righteous Judge of Souls was the first to trespass on the dominion of the Beast With Just One Eye; thus he hid his might beneath human flesh and sought to chain the Beast.

Next was the Trickster, the Haunter of the Dark, he who gambles for the fate of his masterpiece; it was he who made an alliance with the Judge, and it is he who gathers the champions under his banner.

Third was the Zero Point Pathogen, the Black Signal, he who is the emissary of the Lucid Dreamers; by his power, the Ghost In The Machine was devoured, and by his voice, the message of the Sun Eaters shall be heard by all.

Fourth was the Dragon, the Ouroboros, he who devoured his world and transcended the Curse; harken, for he is the Herald's footpad, the hunter of the Shapeless One. Fifth was… is… was… is… was…"

There was another pause. "Has this happened yet?" Ford asked. "Is it yet to come? Is it happening right now? I… I can't tell. The signs aren't clear."

For thirty long seconds, Stan could only stare blankly into the gloom, trying to work out what madness he'd blundered into this time. In the end, all he could say was a blank mumble of "… _Ford?"_

Ahead of him, the grinding sound of charcoal on marble stopped, and Stan had the sudden impression that Ford was peering over his shoulder; could he see something _glowing_ out there in the darkness, or was it just his imagination?

"Oh," said Ford, his voice distant and eerily monotonous. "Hello, Stanley. It's good to see you up and about. I was starting to wonder if you'd ever wake up ever again. Please, come closer."

"Are… are you alright, Ford?"

"Never better."

"You could have fooled me."

"I don't want to be alone anymore," said Ford absently.

"What?"

"I've been alone with the Sight for too long, Stanley. I think it's trying to force me outside, but I can't stop using it: it helps me take my mind off wishing, you see. True, I can only catch a few glimpses of the world outside, but I've already learned so much from the truths nestled between the unrealities."

There was a slightly embarrassed silence, and then Ford coughed loudly.

"Oh, _right!"_ he said, his voice suddenly back to its usual gruffly amiable tone. "Inflection, tone, register, emphasis. I'm supposed to speaking with _emotion_ in my voice, yes? Sorry. I haven't had anyone to talk to while you were comatose, and I spent a lot of time with the Sight. I think I almost forgot how speech works."

Stan groaned. "You're doing it again, you know."

"Doing what?"

"The zero-explanation monologue, Poindexter. Every now and again, you give me a huge lecture on whatever weird thing's been happening lately, only you keep leaving holes where the actual explanations should have been, and then you wonder why I end up getting left in the dust. I really wish you w-"

Suddenly, Ford was standing right in front of him. Stan hadn't even seen him move, much less emerge from the shadows: one moment, he'd been sitting in the darkness a good twenty feet away, the next, he was dragging Stan a good ten feet to the left, and clamping an ice-cold hand over his mouth for good measure.

And now that he was standing in the beam of the flashlight, Stan realized that Ford had changed: behind his glasses, the pupils of his eyes had begun to glow an unnatural shade of cyan, shining brightly enough to cast a faint light on his wan features. And as Stan looked closer, he realized that those tiny glowing pupils were actually _changing shape,_ their outline wavering and shifting, changing from circles to triangles, from oblongs to octagons… and then back to circles once again, two tiny sparks of electric-blue energy flickering with power in the darkness of Ford's eyes.

" _Don't_ wish," said Ford, urgently. "Whatever you do, _do not wish._ You're standing right under the dome at the moment, and anything even vaguely announced as a wish can and will come true, so _do not wish for anything._ "

"Mmmp!"

"Sorry." He took his hand away. "Instinctive response. After the first time I made that mistake… it left a bit of an impression on me."

Stan took a deep breath, blinking rapidly as he took in the haggard-looking figure in front of him. "What the hell _happened_ to you, Ford?" he said at last. "How did we even get here? And what happened to Self-Loathing? Is-"

"He's dead," said Ford.

"What?"

"Well, I managed to destroy his physical form, but he's probably still active inside your brain – not much I can do about that, sadly. On the upside, those museum displays burn a lot better than most of the wood I've been provided with up until now."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up a minute... _you killed Self-Loathing and burned the museum exhibits?_ How did you even get to the Museum from here – wherever here is?"

"That's… a bit difficult to explain. I remember meeting you in a dream-"

Stan's eyes widened, remembering the dream he'd experienced moments before Self-Loathing had caught up with him.

"-and when I awoke, there was a path in the Labyrinth leading into the Museum. I could be wrong, but I suspect outside intervention: there was a letter, earlier, promising that I would find "absolution in a dream" and that there would be a door. As I recall, it was from a Mr A-"

"Wait, you too? He sent me a message through one of the museum exhibits!"

"In that case, it was _definitely_ outside intervention. Long story short, I found you and brought you back here. Trouble is, I didn't have the means to treat your injuries, so I had to take you to the dome and wish you back to health, so…" He sighed. "Well, just take a look at my eyes."

"Ford?"

"Yes?"

"Remember what I was telling you about missing explanations? You're doing it again. What _is_ this place, why does it grant wishes, and why did it do… _**that**_ _…_ to your eyes?"

Ford sighed deeply. "This is my prison, Stanley, the Dome of Wishes. It's also the centrepiece of Bill's plan for me: once he'd locked me in here, Bill made it so that I could ask for whatever I'd need to make my stay a little more bearable – but at a price: every wish infuses me with Weirdness. It empowers me with abilities that only Bill and his allies possess, warps my mind a little closer to madness. Once I've made enough wishes, this place _might_ release me, but by then, I'll be one of the Henchmaniacs."

He paused, and added, "You see why I didn't want you wishing? As long as you're standing under the dome, it's listening for anything that might be voiced as a request."

Stan glanced up at the dome, recognizing for the first time that he'd been standing directly under it just before he'd found Ford.

"So how many times have you… wished?" he asked.

"Twice. First by accident, the second to heal you."

"So what's the problem? Apart from the eyes, you haven't changed much, and… no offence, but you don't seem any crazier than you usually do. I mean, you were a little out of it back there, but now-"

"I can _See,_ Stanley."

"What?"

"My eyes no longer perceive the mere visible spectrum of reality. I can see _beyond_ this prison. I can see the Weirdness hidden behind the walls, the power linking the playgrounds, even the power of the Henchmaniacs. It's like having a street map made of jewelled mosaics printed on the inside of my eyeballs, and it keeps pouring into my head every time I concentrate… and that was only what I got from the first wish. Now…"

Ford took a deep breath, and suddenly flickered out of view.

A split-second later, he reappeared – right behind Stan, almost sending him leaping out of his skin.

"I'm becoming unmoored," he explained. "My being is losing its anchor to physical reality. I can only teleport myself about twenty feet away at maximum so far, but the merest presence of the ability is already starting to alter my outlook on reality. I can't tell you how many times I've caught myself just warping my way across the room because it was easier than walking – that's how it _starts,_ Stanley! That's how I'm tempted to wish again. And my Sight…"

His eyes blazed.

"My Sight's only expanded more. I've gone from seeing energy to seeing how it's been used and shaped across time. I've gone from seeing the footprint to seeing the moment of its creation. I see into the past, further and further with every use, and every time I use it, I slip a little deeper into Oracular Insanity. That gibberish you heard back there was just a sample of how I could end up speaking: when you're using the Sight, you can't think to speak any other way…

"And that's just a taster of what I'm going to have to go through if we want to get out of here," he concluded with a sigh.

Stan paused as he slowly digested this information.

"So… there's no other way out of here?"

"None. Believe me, I've checked: there's no exits here or in the Labyrinth – and the Sight confirms it."

"And you can't just teleport your way out?"

"In a word, no. The last time I tried, it just sent me right back to the dome."

"And you can't just wish to escape?"

"Nope; I should know, Bill gave me a list."

Stanley floundered, wracking his brain for more exotic answers. "What about finding some kind of a loophole in the wishing system? I mean, don't you remember all those weird stories you read when you were a kid – the ones about evil genies and cursed wishing wells? There was always a loophole in those, like wishing for nothing, or wishing for infinite wishes-"

In spite of himself, Ford's pallid features creased into a smile. " _The Doom-Wish?"_ he chuckled. "You actually remembered _The Doom-Wish?_ Holy hell, Stanley, I hadn't thought about that old book for the better part of a decade…" He sighed deeply, and his smile took on a distinctly saddened look. "Before the Sight, I might very well tried that, but now I can see the mechanisms of this place; now I can see what works and what won't. Bill had plenty of time to think out the possibilities of this place, and he wasn't prepared to lose a toy to any something like that: the old loopholes are out of the question."

"Plenty of time?" Stan echoed. "How'd you mean? How long have you been trapped here?"

"Time's… a little difficult to measure without day or night to define it, but with the Sight…"

The glow in Ford's pupils expanded suddenly, growing to encompass his eyes entirely.

"Time is not what it seems," he said, his voice once again cold and distant. "Bill can distend time at will, and none of us will ever know it. Bill had a year of relative time inside the prison to work out the system, and he used it well. You have been asleep for three years, Stanley."

"WHAT?"

"Three years of external time, of _real time._ Internally, only three days. Now, "real" time rare, confined only to a few playgrounds; now, time means whatever Bill thinks it means. Soon, "real" time will become a fantasy, a dream of a world in which the passage of hours meant something…"

"Something tells me this conversation's gonna end with a migraine," Stan muttered.

"It does," said Ford.

"Huh?"

"It hurts, Stanley. I want to ignore it, but I can't. Even without the Sight active, I can't help but notice the warping of time across the playgrounds. I've seen how it's changed, and I've seen how it can change on a whim. I've been imprisoned here for almost sixty-four years, but only five months have passed in real time. Robbie lived on the streets for almost five years and barely perceived one, Soos walked for almost a century, Mabel served a five-year sentence in the two worlds, Dipper and Wendy roamed the wastelands for more than a year and a half-"

"Hang on, hang on, what was that about Mabel and Dipper?!"

"He's dead."

"WHAT?"

"Bill told me he was dead… he could be lying, but he could be telling the truth… my visions tell me he's at once dead and alive… oh my god, the skin, _the skin…"_

Was it Stan's imagination, or were those tears pouring from Ford's blazing eyesockets?

"But Dipper went onwards," Ford ranted on, oblivious to the interruption. "Or backwards. Wait, no, that doesn't make sense… I… Dipper's been asleep for thirty years, but I can't see how-"

"Uh, Ford, your nose is starting to bleed…"

"He's alive and dead and alive and dead and alive and dead and alive and dead and and and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

Stan jumped backwards as the scream rippled out across the chamber. "Ford, wha-"

" _YOU!"_ Ford shrieked at the top of his voice, pointing a long, crooked finger in Stan's direction. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!"

"I…" Stan's nerve briefly failed him, those terrifying spotlight eyes transfixing him. "You brought me here, remember?" he said at last.

"Not you, _him! HIM!_ "

Heart hammering, Stan very slowly turned to look in the direction Ford was pointing, only to find himself staring into empty space.

"Who?"

"He's standing right behind you, Stanley! He's laughing at us!"

* * *

Nyarlathotep was impressed.

It had been a very long time since anyone had seen through his psychic shroud, and none of those sharp-eyed folk had been born of the mortal races. Bill's Weirdness was indeed changing Ford, and quite drastically so: if he could see through the shroud, even at its lowest intensity, perhaps he might be capable of greater feats than even Bill could have imagined.

Once again, the zodiac were much more powerful than anyone had originally intended… but would they be powerful enough for what Axolotl had in mind?

Would they be enough for Nyarlathotep's purposes?

Just how much of his help would these two monkeys need?

"Ford, there's no-one there."

"Yes there is! The Haunter of the Dark! The strange dark one to whom the fellahs bowed! The Black Pharaoh! Wrapped in fabrics red as sunset flame! MR CARTER! The Crawling Chaos!"

 _Oh, you_ _ **are**_ _perceptive, little man. Perhaps you really are up to snuff._

"Look, you really need to calm down, Sixer-"

"AND HE'S NOT THE ONLY ONE! SOMEONE'S JUST OPENED THE DOOR!"

Nyarlathotep didn't need to follow Ford's gaze: he felt the new arrival ripple out across the room, and knew at once that it was what had drawn the hysterical seer's attention.

Drawing a bag of popcorn from his infinite pockets, Nyarlathotep sat back to watch the spectacle unfold; he himself was well beyond Stanford's reach, but the newest intruder _wasn't_. This would be an altercation worth observing…

* * *

"She's climbing across the walls! She's crawling on the ceiling!" Ford screamed, now pointing wildly upwards.

For his part, Stan could only do his best to hold him back; the last thing he needed now was for Ford to break his knuckles on the wall in his attempts to fight off whatever he was seeing. _Christ,_ he thought, _this is even worse than the day I came to Gravity Falls; at least then he wasn't hallucinating or whatever he's doing._

"Need to… need to…"

"No you _don't_ , Ford; just take a deep breath and-"

In that moment, Ford managed to struggle free, and before Stan could make another grab for him, he managed to remove one of his shoes and throw it at the nearest column – specifically, at a point perhaps twenty feet above their heads.

And to Stan's surprise, the shoe made contact with a muffled _squish_ – prompting a sharp yelp of _"Ow!"_ from seemingly nowhere.

No sooner had the words _what the hell was that_ flickered through Stan's head, something large, heavy and suddenly visible dropped from the ceiling, seemingly coalescing into a solid shape as it fell, finally landing almost at their feet with a loud thud on its back. There was a frantic scrabbling as several limbs struggled to upright the body they supported, and as the ghastly shape on the floor gradually hauled itself upright, Stan realized with a thrill of horror that he'd seen this monster before.

From the waist up, she was exactly as he remembered her: buxom, heavily-tanned, and immediately distinguished by the mass of lurid bottle-blonde hair perched atop her head, she was still dressed in the tattered remains of a neon-pink tube top, and though her makeup was absent and her colossal sunglasses were long gone, she still wore one dreamcatcher earring.

And from the waist down, she was exactly as she'd appeared in Stan's nightmares: a giant spider, seven feet wide and almost as tall; her hairy legs _clicked_ an ear-piercing fandango across the marble floor as she took in the sight of Ford and Stan, and as she glared down at them, Stan thought he caught a glimpse of poisonous mandible sliding into position just behind her lips.

Darlene hadn't changed that much.

"Hot Belgian Waffles," whispered Stan.

In that moment, he would have liked nothing more than to run, but with Darlene less than three feet away, he knew there wouldn't be much point trying to escape – especially given that he didn't know the layout of this place.

"Jesus," the spider-woman muttered. _"You_ again? Of all the people I gotta run into, I gotta run into _you?_ Goddamn, this was so much easier in worlds where Delirium was a thing. And you got a twin as well? Or did you just start reproducing by mitosis when I wasn't lookin'?"

"The force of calcification!" Ford shrieked, eyes blazing brighter than ever. "The spider strangles the worm! The binding web grows and suffocates!"

Darlene blinked. "I… is he drunk or something?"

Stan laughed nervously. "He's just fine, actually!" he said loudly, as he tried and failed to drag Ford away. "Just a little bit tired! That's all that's wrong! We were just leaving, you see, and-"

"Child of Queen Ananasa! Ancestor of Order! The Wyrm cries out in rage and the Weaver exalts!"

Darlene looked from Ford to Stan, and for the first time since he'd met her, Stan saw something _new_ in her pitch-black eyes – something a little like fear.

"Keep _him_ away from me," she said quietly.

Stan blinked. "Why?"

"It doesn't matter why! Just keep whatever the hell that _thing_ is away from me."

"…Are you trembling?"

"Shut up!"

In spite of himself, Stan actually managed a smile. "You _are_ trembling!" he said triumphantly. "You're actually scared of him! What's the matter? Is the big scary spider-woman monster allergic to nerds?"

Darlene's already-soured expression turned downright bilious. "Listen up, you old fart," she snarled, "I've been looking for a decent feeding ground ever since Weirdmageddon went global; I've seen things that would make my big sisters piss their panties in terror, and I've had my exoskeleton chewed on so badly that it makes getting crushed under a Paul Bunyan statue look like a picnic. Long story short, I've had it with this armpit of a dimension: I'm getting the hell outta dodge before it gets any worse, and the last thing I want is to get within arm's reach of anything half as creepy as what's out there before I hit the road. _Capisce?"_

"…you mean you're not here to eat us?"

"Of course not! You really think I'd take this many risks just to eat _you?_ Hon, you're nowhere near that appetising. I took a wrong turn on my way out of the last playground, that's all."

"Oh." Something in the last few minutes' worth of ranting belatedly caught Stan's attention, and he added, "What do you mean 'anything half as creepy as what's out there?'"

"I'm just saying, your brother has something seriously wrong with him. Seriously, I've seen Drones and Formori that weren't as messed-up on the outside as he is on the inside: that sort of energy isn't supposed to be in human veins, believe me."

"The Triat cries out in despair!" Ford ranted. "The Wyld smothered, the Wyrm fettered, the Weaver triumphant over all!"

"Aaaaaand that's another reason why I'm getting the hell out of here," muttered Darlene.

" _What's_ another reason? What are you talking about?"

"Bill ain't the only big bad monster in town, hot stuff. His little ship's been boarded and he doesn't even know it… and there's gonna be a new passenger aboard _real_ soon. Grandma's comin' to town."

"Your _grandma?"_

"The Grandma of us all, of all my kind scattered across the web of worlds! I thought she wouldn't be able to follow us from the home dimension, but she's found a way to bridge the gap between realities! The creator of my race is on her way, old man, and she's not gonna be happy when she sees the state of this place…"

Darlene let out a shudder, and began to transform – not into her human form, not into her pure spider form, but into a vast swarm of hairy-legged spiders, a colossal living carpet of glistening black bodies rippling out into the shadows of the room. As Stan watch, the spiders formed a column and began swiftly filing away into a corner of a room; there, one by one, they vanished, until all that was left of Darlene was the fading echo of a thousand arachnid feet upon the marble.

"What… the _hell_ was that?" Stan gasped.

By way of an answer, Ford staggered and almost fell. Stan caught him just in time, but by then, that was the least of his brother's problems: the nosebleed had escalated – substantially; blood was _gushing_ out of his nose, and unless Stan was mistaken, a few tell-tale red drops were starting to trickle from Ford's blazing eyes.

"Ford, whatever you're doing, you need to stop-"

"I _CAN'T!"_ Ford howled, clutching his head in pain."I've lost control – it's happening entirely on its own!"

"Then what do we do?"

"You think I know?!"

"I was _hoping!_ I mean, you can see everything now, right?"

"Not everything but still too much! I'm trying to find a handhold, but the Sight's moving too quickly for me to find them and it's too much. Too much has happened, and it keeps pouring into my head! There's not enough room! _THERE'S NOT ENOUGH ROOM!"_

"Try to think of something else! Think of your family, think of your friends, maybe that'll help!"

"I… I think I might… I might… oh no."

"Oh no?" echoed Stan.

Ford opened his mouth to reply, but what emerged wasn't speech, but what Stan could only describe as _prophecy._

" **I SEE THEM,"** said Ford. **"I SEE ALL OF THEM, AND WHAT THEY HAVE BECOME. I CAN EVEN SEE… A LITTLE BIT OF WHAT MIGHT BE."**

"Ford, you need to-"

" **HEPHAESTUS WORKS THE FORGE OF HELL**

 **WHAT HE'S FORGOTTEN, NONE CAN TELL.**

 **CALLISTO, LOST IN BLOOD AND TEARS,**

 **NOW LEADS THE HUNT AND RULES OUR FEARS**

 **AND PROTEUS WAITS WITHIN HIS TOMB**

 **TO CHANGE, TO KILL, TO BRING FORTH DOOM.**

 **BUT THALIA LEAVES HER GRIEF BEHIND**

 **BEFORE HER TIME SHALL ALL UNWIND**

 **MELPOMENE EMERGES FROM HER HOME**

 **TO REDEEM HER NAME AND CLEANSE THE THRONE**

 **ONCE CHARON LIVED AMONG THE DEAD**

 **HE NOW GOES ON TO RULE INSTEAD**

 **MELAMPUS HAS CAST ASIDE HIS AGE-OLD FRAUD**

 **TO FORESEE THE END AND LEAD THE HORDE**

 **SISYPHUS NO LONGER WALKS HIS ROAD OF PAIN**

 **IT SEEMS THAT ORPHEUS IS NOW HIS NAME**

 **AND DEIMOS AND PHOBOS…"**

Ford's eyelids fluttered wildly. "Who are Deimos and Phobos?" he asked nobody in particular. "Who are they supposed to be? I can't see yet, but… but…" A mad smile crept across his face. "But I could… it would be so easy… all I have to do is wish-"

His eyes widened. "NO NO NO NO! Stan, you have to stop me from thinking about it! You need to derail my train of thought!"

"I need to _what?!"_

"You need to find some way of temporarily shorting out my thoughts before I try to make a wish! It's the only way I can regain control of the Sight! Hit me with something! Punch my lights out! It's the only way to be sure!"

In spite of himself, Stan hesitated. A month ago, he would have jumped at the chance to sucker-punch Ford: even though they'd sworn to a truce for as long as they were still sharing the shack, the resentment between the two of them had never really gone away, and both Stan and Ford had been looking for an excuse to continue their reintroductory brawl every time they locked eyes – a point they'd proved quite soundly back at the Fearamid, Stan remembered with a fresh thrill of embarrassment. Now, though, after what they'd been through since then – Ford's grief at seeing him hurt, meeting again in a dream, the rescue from the Museum – punching Ford was the furthest from Stan's mind. Besides, the guy was already bleeding from about half the orifices in his head; the last thing he wanted to do was make the problem even worse.

So, instead, Stan did what he did best… and improvised.

"Why don't bears eat clowns?"

Ford blinked.

"Wha… I-I don't-"

"Because they taste funny!"

"Oh god almighty, not _jokes!"_ Ford groaned. "Stanley, you need to knock me out, not practice your comedy routine! Now do it before I lose control again and start wishing!"

"Not a chance, brother; you wanted me to short out your thoughts, and that's what I'm gonna do! Either I make you laugh, or I annoy you into submission, whichever way works. Now, did you hear the one about the bread and the butter?"

"Rrrrrrrrghhh!"

"I'm not gonna tell you – you'd only spread it around! Ha-ha! Boom!"

" _Just hit me!_ I'm not going to be able to stop myself from wishing!"

"Why did the worker get fired from the calendar factory?"

"I… I don't know."

"Because he took a day off!"

"Awful and a waste of time! You're not on a fishing trip, Stanley, you're-"

"On a roll! Now, what were the headlines when a midget fortune teller escaped from prison?"

"I… I don't…"

"Small medium at large!"

Ford _almost_ smiled at that one.

"What did I tell ya? Now, I got a sick one for ya: a guy's being followed around by this coffin, just hovering down the street after him; so he goes to his doctor and ask 'is there anything you can do about this awful-'"

"Coffin," finished Ford, unable to hide his smile. Was it Stan's imagination, or was the glow in his eyes beginning to dim?

"Why should you bury lawyers fifty feet underground?"

Ford very quietly covered his mouth.

"Because they're good people deep down!"

"Ohohoho no…"

"Wait, I got a winner for ya!" Stan proclaimed triumphantly. "I learnt this one when I ended up in the can: a drunk guy walks up to a cop and says 'someone's just stole my car! It was right on the end of this key!' The cop takes one look at him and says, 'go home and sleep it off before I run you in, you're not even wearing pants!' The drunk guy looks down and says "THEY'VE STOLEN MY GIRLFRIEND TOO!"

And with that, Ford began to laugh, a long raucous eruption of cackling that bent him double and almost sent him toppling to the floor. For almost a full minute, he could only stand there, braced against the nearest column as he howled with mirth, completely oblivious to the world around him.

And to Stan's surprise, he began to laugh as well – not at the jokes, of course for he'd recited all of them a thousand times before. In the end, he laughed simply because after all the arguments, the jealousy, the resentment and all those stubborn refusals, after thirty years of separation and estrangement, they were finally together again and laughing at cheesy jokes – just like they had when they were kids. True, back then, they'd had vastly different interests; Ford couldn't have gotten Stan interested in mysteries and science any more than Stan could have gotten Ford interested in girls and boxing… but still they always somehow ended up laughing whenever Stan brought out the little book of lame jokes, if only because he'd worked out the fine art of pushing past the annoyance barrier and into actual comedy.

In the end, Stan laughed out of sheer relief.

And when the two of them finally stopped laughing, the light had receded from Ford's eyes, and he was back to normal – well, as normal as he could be with pupils that glowed and changed shape, but normal nonetheless.

"Stanley?" he said quietly.

"Yes?"

"…Thank you. For bringing me back through the portal. For finding me in the dream. For everything."

And in that moment, Stan couldn't have kept the smile off his face without dynamite.

"Hey, what are siblings for if not for helping? Besides, I never got around to thanking you for saving my life back at the museum… or for giving me my life in Gravity Falls. The way I see it, we're even – and always have been."

And in spite of all the things that must have been going on in his brain, Ford smiled back. "You're right," he said, almost laughing again. "What are siblings for if not for helping?"

* * *

"What do you know," murmured Nyarlathotep. "Perhaps my help wasn't needed after all. Quite a refreshing change; I think Stan and Ford Pines are more than adequate for my purposes, don't you?"

From somewhere around shoe level, something vaguely human-shaped let out an anguished squeal.

"Pipe down or I'll rip another leg off, Darlene."

"Wrr rrr yrrr dddrrng thhhrs?"

Nyarlathotep shifted his left toecap off the spider-woman's mandibles. "Beg pardon?"

"Why are you doing this? Who _are_ you?" she demanded.

"Just a concerned businessman, really. Truth be told, I'm serving as something of a talent scout of late and… well, you said your grandmother was on the way here; just how soon will she arrive in this dimension?"

"My time measurement skills went out the window when Weirdmageddon went global… but I know for a fact that we don't have long. What's your interest in her?"

"Let's just say I've heard a great deal about your 'grandmother,' the one that the Fera of Gaia call the Weaver… and I'd be very interested in meeting her. So that's my price, Darlene: introduce me to the beloved creator of your species, and I'll spare your life. Does that sound fair?"

Darlene gave him a look that suggested that it was about as fair as juggling chainsaws in a vat of sulphuric acid under a rain of napalm. "Perfectly fair," she lied.

"Excellent! Now, if you'll excuse me, I just need to make a quick phone call…"

Once again, Nyarlathotep drew his rune-encrusted phone from his pocket, and went about punching a long and complicated number too intricate for human minds to follow. For twelve seconds, the phone rang as the Outer God waited patiently for his newest possible recruit to answer.

Then, at long last, a tired voice answered, old, haggard, brusque and sporting a Scottish accent so harsh it could have doubled as a piece of sandpaper.

"Phillip Scofeld, I fuck lobsters for money," said the voice.

"Doctor!" cackled Nyarlathotep. "Good to hear from you again, Twelve, it's been far too long. Nyarlathotep here."

The Doctor let out a long, wearied groan. "Jesus Christ, can't you people leave me alone for five minutes? _I'm on fucking holiday!"_

"So I heard. And how's the holiday job going? Prime Minister's Director of Communications, wasn't it?"

"I just got fired, you unctuous cockslobber, and you fucking knew that already. It's no fucking fun whatsoever just being Malcolm Tucker, and the last thing I need in this clogged colon of a day is _another_ fucking Great Old One or Outer God or Squamous Scrotum making my life a living hell. Seriously, every time I try to settle down and relax, Cthulhu appears on the horizon with half a mind to use the BT Tower as a bum dildo; and if it's not that, it's fucking Shoggoths stowing away on the TARDIS-"

"Doctor-"

"-or the Deep Ones short-circuiting K-9 or _you_ trying to sell scrap metal to the Daleks-"

"Look, that wasn't me, okay? Well, it was me, but that was a different version of me from another dimension. But that's beside the point-"

"I can't even take a selfie without getting photobombed by Dagon!" the Doctor exploded. "Granted, I wouldn't have minded if the bastard wasn't such a committed nudist and-"

"The Axolotl sent me," Nyarlathotep interjected neatly.

"…what?"

"You heard me. The Axolotl has need of your services… and those of your earlier incarnations. Listen carefully…"

* * *

Perhaps an hour later, Stan and Ford were up and walking about the chamber. Ford had finally put his coat back on and was now doing his best to make the place a little more homely: relighting the torches, rekindling the fireplace, pulling up a chair or two, and even serving some food on hand-crafted wooden plates. Admittedly, there wasn't much in the way of soft furnishings, the only food consisted of mushrooms in whatever format they could be cooked, and at first Ford seemed a little bit focussed on keeping some of the artworks on the walls obscured, but it was better than nothing.

Plus, there was booze.

True, it smelled and tasted of well-matured turpentine, but after drinking classic prison-recipe Pruno, there wasn't much on the alcoholic spectrum that could disgust Stan anymore.

Once the two of them were seated by the fire and warming up at long last, they talked, a long rambling conversation that took them everywhere from Stan's con games in the deepest darkest corners of the United States to the far-flung dimensions that Ford had stumbled upon in his mad journey across space and time, and had them discussing everything from the fine art of pickpocketing to the customs of the lunar man-hamsters of Bezzikch XIII. And of course, both of them discussed Gravity Falls – for after all, it had been a sanctuary to both of them for a time, a place where they could feel at home after a lifetime of being either the outsider or the outcast. This wasn't just a friendly chat: this was the catch-up conversation that they'd been meaning to have ever since Ford had arrived home, a long-overdue outpouring of every experience they'd hadn't shared with each other up until today, fuelled by days of cumulative depression and fear and final relief…

…not to mention several glasses of Ford's home-made mushroom wine.

There was laughter, there was boasting, there was nostalgia, there were even more jokes than before; there were tales of past victory, there were ballads of impossible friendships and deeply questionable romances, there were horror stories of every stripe… and of course, there were the inevitable discussions of just how much the family had changed in the years since they'd spoken of it.

Eventually, once they'd almost finished off their first bottle, the conversation somewhat inevitably turned to the matter of escaping the labyrinth.

"So you can actually _see_ the rules of the place?" Stan asked.

"With the Sight, yes: I can see the spells and enchantments that Bill's cast upon this building, and I can see how they enforce the rules."

"Okay… if we can't escape from the dome, what if you wished the others _here?_ Sure it's not much, but maybe we could make it into a base of operations; maybe we could make it into the new Shacktron – maybe McGucket's up to turning whole worlds into robots, I dunno."

"As much fun as that'd be, it won't work. Not because McGucket wouldn't be able to make a pocket dimension on legs or anything like that – the dome won't allow me to bring anyone from the outside here. I mean, don't you think I would've wished for a bit of company if it meant bringing in outside help?"

"Alright, so what about curing yourself of the Sight? Can't you just wish it away?"

"Bill thought of that already; no dice, unfortunately."

"A bomb?"

Ford's brow wrinkled. "A bomb?" he echoed.

"I mean, what if you could just punch a hole in the wall and out into the… what did you call it?"

"The intra-dimensional reality nexus containment realm; in layman's terms, the space between playgrounds."

"Well, what if Bill didn't make the barriers here as strong as the other playgrounds? What if the only thing keeping us from leaping into the space between playgrounds is a marble wall?"

"Believe me, I'd normally be all in favour of blowing something up by now. Trouble is, Bill once again thought of that: he wasn't leaving anything to chance with the walls. Plus, I doubt we'd be allowed to wish for a bomb. Maybe the bomb's _components_ , but that's another story."

"What about wishing for more powerful teleportation?"

"Ditto. I can see the energies around the dome and the labyrinth, and they form a cage; no matter how far I can teleport, this place won't let me leave until I've run out of wishes."

"And you're absolutely sure about that?"

"Positive. You see the dome?" Ford pointed directly upwards. "Just above the apex of that structure, there's a massive reservoir of Weirdness: that's where the fuel for the wishes comes from, and it's by channelling that energy into _me_ that my transformations occur. The exit protocols of this place are directly tied to that reservoir; as long as there's a drop of Weirdness left there, we won't be able to leave."

"And there's no way of telling just how much Weirdness each wish actually uses, right? So there's no way of just… I don't know, calculating the number of wishes we need to get out?"

"Pretty much."

"Damn."

"Well, I hate to sound defeatist, Stanley, but maybe going crazy won't be so bad after all."

"Hang on… _are you giving up?"_

Ford offered another one of his trademarked mysterious smiles. "Not necessarily," he said ruefully. "I'm just saying that… well, you helped me back from madness before. Maybe, if I go all the way, you'll be able to do it again."

Stan opened his mouth to reply – to tell Ford that this was the worst possible idea, that he had to rethink, that there had to be another way… and then, something Ford had said belatedly made contact with his brain.

Once again, inspiration struck. After close to sixty years of life, Stan knew full well that he was no genius, and he understood just how precious these brainstorms were: he'd only been the recipient of that tiny thunderbolt to the brain a handful of times, and he'd learned to embrace it the moment it appeared… especially now. This was just an idea – a small idea, microscopic idea, a flea of a detail… but it was a detail that Ford had missed, and as the old cliché went, the devil was in the details.

"About the reservoir up there," he began tentatively.

"Hmmm?"

"You say it's drained every time you make a wish?"

"That's right."

"And we'll only escape once we've used up every last drop of it."

"Yes, yes. Where are you going with this, Stanley?"

" _Does it really have to be you?"_

"What."

"I'm just asking, Ford: do you really have to be the one who makes the wishes? Do you have to be the one who takes the fall? Is there any rule about this place that says it can't be _me?"_

Ford's expression froze.

"You can't be serious," he said quietly.

"I am, Sixer, believe me. I'm more serious than I've ever been in my entire life."

"But… how…"

"You were worried about the dome granted one of my wishes earlier, remember?" Stan reasoned. "Bill didn't think there'd ever be two prisoners here, so maybe – just maybe – when someone makes a wish here, it doesn't automatically go to you. What I made a wish, and the Weirdness went to me instead?"

"No! No, you can't! Why would you even… _No!"_

"Just listen, Ford: this makes perfect sense if you just think about it-"

"No it doesn't! It what universe could this possibly make any sense?! Why would you want to even _think_ of doing this?"

"Because it's the only thing we can do."

"NO!" Ford bellowed, now firmly in 'angry scientist mode', but under the furious roar, Stan could easily hear the plaintive note to his voice; as a child, Ford had only used that tone of voice when he was hurt and was trying valiantly to hide it – valiantly but unsuccessfully. "I just got you back!" he continued desperately. _"I thought you'd never wake up!_ I've only just gotten to know you again, and now I've got to risk _losing_ you? You want to destroy your own mind, all because I balked at taking my medicine?!"

"Oh don't be such a drama queen, Ford. Also, this isn't just your 'medicine' anymore-"

" _Yes it is!_ I'm here because of everything I've screwed up over the course of my life: summoning Bill, building the portal, fighting with you, and – for all I know – _getting Dipper killed!_ Because he followed my example, because he joined me in trying to stop Weirdmageddon, Bill tortured him, maybe even killed him _and it's all my fault!_ And yes, maybe Bill lied to me… but that doesn't change the fact that everyone ended up in this situation because of me! This was supposed to be _my_ punishment and mine alone-"

"And like I told you back in the dream, Ford, you don't deserve to be punished. If Dipper's alive out there somewhere, we're going to find him and rescue him; the same goes for Mabel and Soos and Wendy and McGucket and everyone else Bill's captured. Besides, I'm not going to destroy my mind; I'm just going to share the load."

"How?"

"Well, can I make wishes? If I make a wish under the dome, will the Weirdness be pumped into me instead of you?"

Ford's pupils glowed vividly as he opened his eyes to the Sight for the second time that day. For five minutes, he studied the world with his new vision, his expression on the edge of desperation; eventually, the glow once again receded, and Ford replied, "Yes."

"Okay then, here's how it'll go: I'll make a wish for something small, something unimportant, and I'll get my share of power and madness out of it. Once I've recovered _and_ caught up with you, you make a wish; then _I_ make a wish; then _you_ make a wish, and so on. We keep making small wishes until we've exhausted the reservoir of Weirdness, and we can get out of here. By the end, we'll both have powers and we'll both have a little bit of madness, but hopefully we'll have shared it out just evenly enough to stop us from turning into blood-drinking potato-heads or whatever. How's that sound?"

For almost thirty seconds, Ford could only stare in astonishment. "That… actually sounds feasible," he eventually admitted. "But… couldn't I just take a bit more than-"

"No, Ford. It has to be equal."

"But this isn't fair," Ford all but whimpered, and by now he sounded so much like he had as a child it almost hurt to listen to him. "It shouldn't have to all be on you. You've got a family, remember?"

"They're your family, too, Sixer. We're in this together now: we keep each other stable, just like you said, and this way… this way we win."

A minute passed in silence, as Ford visibly tried and failed to think of some kind of opposition to the idea; after so much time spent here, he was out of ideas.

"Okay," he sighed. "Okay. I still don't like this idea… but at this point I don't have much of a choice. Whatever happens please, promise me you won't take any more Weirdness than me."

"You have my word as your brother."

"Good."

Ford took a deep breath. "So… what do you want to wish for?"

* * *

A/N: Anyone care to try their hand at deciphering Ford's deranged ranting back towards the middle of the chapter?

Up next - the winter march begins, allegiances are decided, and the False Prophet meets the first of the Horsemen.

Or, if you prefer...

Dsl dlfow szev gslftsg gsv uznlfh orzi  
Dlfow yv gsv lmv gl ortsg gsv uriv?  
Gsv lizxov xlnnzmwh gsvri nrmwh zmw svzigh  
Gsvb nzb bvg gvzi Yroo'h dliow zkzig


	24. Of Unforeseen Meetings

A/N: Aaaaaand latest chapter, everyone! It's taken a very long time and a very long chapter to get this far, but it's been worth it. Thank you to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed: I hope this chapter lives up to standards, and I'll do my best not to let the thanks take up too much space - I'm trying to get out of that particular habit, please forgive me.

Brenne, Blind-Eyephone, Hourglass Cipher, a very angry ravage, Northgalus2002, Allotrios, Carcer13, LoyalTheorist, Kraven the Hunter, skywalkerchick1138, Fantasy Fan 223, Fanboy Guest, Guest - YOU ARE ALL WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL PEOPLE. I loved your theories, I loved your analysis, and I cannot express how grateful I am for your reviews.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is too busy floating out of my hands to be mine.

* * *

Vevm Lizxovh szev gl hgzig hlnvdsviv...

* * *

 _How did I even get_ this _far?_

It had started small, of course.

For a while after he'd received that fateful letter, Gideon had done little more than wait as he'd recovered from his illness. This was easily the most frustrating stage of the "plan," in part because most of it involved lots and lots of bed rest. It took almost a month, but eventually Gideon was almost fit enough to walk unassisted.

Once that was over with, he'd set to work on learning how to control his powers: as the letter had instructed, he'd submerged himself in the thoughts of his fellow refugees for as long as he could comfortably manage, sitting among large groups and letting their constant mindbabble pour down on him like hailstones of jagged glass.

At first, it had been almost impossible to deal with. Every time he tried, the telepathic feedback had left him slumped on the ground, sobbing pathetically as the agony rippled up and down his brain; for good measure, failed attempts like these usually ended with Amanda or some other overly-saccharine bitch picking him up and carried him back to his hut. It had taken all his willpower not to punch the simpering cow in the face and scream _"I'm ten years old! Stop treating me like I'm a baby AND DO SOMETHING USEFUL FOR A CHANGE!"_

But eventually, he'd worked out a strategy: in much the same way that ancient kings had willingly ingested small doses of venom to strengthen their bodies against poison, Gideon had spent short periods of time among the crowds until he was able to build up a resistance to the influx of thoughts. No more collapsing, no more fits, no more nosebleeds, and no more hysterical tears. The pain was still present, but at least it wasn't crippling anymore.

It had taken almost three months to get everything under control, and by the end of it, Gideon was just about ready to start chewing his own ears off. Somehow, though, he kept his sanity just long enough to rallying the refugees. Of course, he'd had to prove to these downtrodden mouthbreathers that he was a real psychic, _and_ he had to get people genuinely interested in following him. The first was easy enough: all he had to do was pluck a few facts out of their heads and speak to them one-on-one about who they'd been before Weirdmageddon.

And then, once he'd planted enough seeds among the refugees to get them talking about him, once he was certain that the rumourmill was turning, Gideon put on his fainting seer shtick and laid on the prophecy nonsense so thickly that it could have doubled as cement: swooning wildly, he told them all of the "great power" that awaited them in the ruins of the city, that there was something out there that would allow them to take the fight to Bill Cipher himself, that they would all be free at last.

Then of course, he'd pretended to pass out.

By the time he "regained consciousness," the refugees were already packing their bags.

And they were looking to him for guidance. And now…

 _The crowd is watching. Don't let them see you hesitate._

Gideon looked down at the procession of refugees slowly following him up the hill, and tried not to cringe in pain as he felt their thoughts rippling up towards him. As upsetting as the telepathic feedback was, far more disturbing were the emotions he could read from the crowd: hope – with just a hint of religious awe.

This had always been a rare thing for Gideon, even in his days as the darling of Gravity Falls; back then, people had loved him, praised him, and made all kinds of excuses for his behaviour, but they'd never looked upon him with _this_ level of adoration. They'd certainly never pinned all their remaining hopes on him, not like the multitude trailing after him.

Gideon wasn't playing pied-piper to a flock of harmless small-town nitwits, nor was he leading a gang of brutal convicts who at least shared his ambitions: he was now serving as the rudder to a mob of over two hundred and fifty desperate, half-crazed men and women, and unless his telepathy was on the fritz, they appeared to be worshipping him as some kind of prophet.

 _Don't let them see you hesitate, don't show uncertainty,_ he told himself. _Don't show fear._

He'd learned this little mantra back when he was just getting started in public speaking: of all the techniques he'd found to focus his mind on the goals at hand, he'd liked this one the best. Trouble was, Gideon didn't _have_ a goal right now, only the rough outline of one that the letter had provided. And sooner or later, that was going to become a problem.

 _Show them you're a star: project confidence._

Looking down at the crowd, he tried to offer the exuberant grin that had captured the hearts of Gravity Falls, but having seen himself in the mirror, he knew it wasn't going to week: after so many weeks spent half-starved from famine, that grin looked more like a pathetic, teeth-gritting rictus.

He tried to continue the mantra, let it focus his mind on the task at hand, but every time he tried, he always found one of those terrible niggling doubts in the way.

 _Project confidence._

 _But confidence in what?_

 _Confidence in_ what _exactly?_ Gideon silently demanded. _What am I supposed to be confident about? I don't have power over these people, not really: they're worshipping me out of desperation. I've only got telepathy and a few tricks up my sleeve, and once they realize that I don't have all the answers, they'll kill me. But what can I do except press onwards?_

 _What am I supposed to have confidence in?_ he asked himself once more.

In the end, all he could do was return to the start: _Don't let them see you hesitate._

Sighing deeply, Gideon tried not to look back at the now-abandoned refugee camp that lay behind them, now little more than a miniscule blotch on the stark white icefields in the distance. Looking back wouldn't help: after all, it wasn't as if anyone would ever have a chance to return to it if this pilgrimage failed, not with all the hazards they'd braved just to get this far. Without regular repairs, the place would already be starting to fall apart; if anyone tried to return, the only thing they'd find would be a pile of rubble.

Instead, he looked up at the snow-blanketed city, at the distant shapes of what had once been the financial district. Somewhere out there, amidst the ruined buildings and tumbledown skyscrapers was supposedly a cache of weapons that would transform his little flock of followers into an army.

Never mind the fact that he wouldn't know where to take the army once he had it. Never mind that arming these people would only make them an even bigger threat to Gideon in the long run. Never mind that his only hint as to where this cache might be was "where nobody would think to look for it." Never mind that the weapons might not be there anymore. Never mind that the letter might very well be another one of Bill's elaborate games. Never mind _every_ logical drawback to the mission at hand.

With turning back out of the question, his only option was to carry on until they found some kind of shelter in the ruins up ahead, and hope that bandit gangs hadn't had the same idea at any point.

 _Hope,_ he thought bitterly. _I'm doing a lot of hoping right now. I've got to hope that we don't get hit by another blizzard, that we don't run into any monsters, that I can find those weapons, and that I don't end up getting lynched when people realize I don't know what the hell I'm doing. And what the hell am I gonna do if Bill finds me? The note said that he has to focus his attention elsewhere from time to time, but he can't look away forever._

 _Safest thing to do would be to plan an escape route, just in case it all goes wrong; there's supposed to be a way out of the snowfields somewhere in the city, so maybe I can fall back on that if the weapon plan doesn't work out._

 _Don't let them see you hesitate._

* * *

It took the better part of a day to get the refugees across the snowfields and into the city itself.

By sheer luck, the first of the derelict building Gideon led them to was not only intact enough to shelter them from the elements, but it was also completely vacant: no fellow refugees, no bandit gangs, no marauding monsters, no Henchmaniacs waiting to attack – just dense walls, a solid ceiling, and enough insulation left around to keep out the cold. Plus, in a practically unfathomable stroke of good fortune, the kitchens hadn't been completely raided – another sign of Gideon's oracular talents, according to the crowd.

As soon as Gideon had found a corner of the building warm and spacious enough to contain all two hundred and fifty of them, he had them build a fire and get settled "while I seek out the power we require," as he'd put it. Secure in the knowledge that their prophet was looking after them, they'd gathered around the fire, and began either preparing meals or catching up on much-needed sleep.

At that point, Gideon was ready to slip away. By now, he desperately needed to start searching the ruins – and he frankly didn't care if he found the hidden cache or the way out of the snowfields first. Whatever the case, he couldn't afford to have this gang of morons tagging along while he was at work: the longer they stayed with him, the more they'd learn about him, and sooner or later they'd discover how little he actually knew.

So, once he was satisfied that nobody was looking in his direction, he made a beeline for the shadows-

-only to bump right into Amanda.

"Where are you going, Gideon?" she asked, her face once again slipping into the familiar kindly-caretaker mask she'd so often worn back when he'd still been confined to a bed.

 _Don't let them see you hesitate._

"I'm going to find the power I told you about," he lied smoothly. "It's somewhere in these ruins, remember?"

"Alone?"

"Obviously! I mean, do you think anyone here has the energy to keep up with me after that walk through the snowfields?"

Amanda sighed deeply. "I'm sorry, but I have to ask: were you _older_ before Weirdmageddon? I'm just saying, I've met people who've been regressed before-"

"Which I haven't been. I'm just an ordinary ten-year-old with the gift of the Third Eye."

"I've never met any ten-year-old as independent as you."

 _Your loss,_ he almost shot back. _Maybe if your own kids had been a bit more like me, you wouldn't have lost them, you stupid bitch._

Out loud, he replied, "That's just how the world works these days. If you can't plan ahead and act on your own ideas, you're as good as dead, and that's why I have to do this: we're not out of the woods just yet, and we need to be ready for the next stage of our quest."

"Is there any reason why you can't find this… power with some help?"

"Look, I appreciate you looking after me, but I can handle this on my own: all I've got to do is get what was promised and bring it back here. With my telepathy, I can spot any monsters before they can see me, and with my other gifts, I'll be able to find my way around without even trying."

"Your _other_ gifts," Amanda echoed, not even bothering to keep the sceptical note from her voice.

Gideon hastily scanned her brain for any signs of dissent. To his immense relief, there was no hostility to be found there, no real suspicion, only concern – for _him_ , oddly enough.

"You don't believe me?" he asked. "Even after everything I've revealed?"

Amanda took a deep breath. "I believe you're a telepath," she admitted. "There's no denying that. Trouble is, back when you were still sick and feverish, you kept _saying_ things – things I'd never told anyone about. You were talking about my nightmares, Gideon, and you spoke about them as if they were real. What if this _thing_ you told us about isn't real either? What if what you saw was just someone's dream of defeating Bill?"

It took all of Gideon's dwindling composure not to break her kneecaps with a length of firewood.

"Amanda, if you didn't believe me, why didn't you say something earlier?"

"Because we needed to get out of that shantytown, but nobody could make up their minds until you came along with the prophecy. Also, when we were heading across the snowfields, you were protected – you had everyone looking out for you. Now you're going out there on your own, and frankly, I'm not prepared to see you hurt or killed over something that might not even be real."

 _Because you're a hormonal hippo with empty nest syndrome, and you're afraid I'll go the same way as your missing-presumed-dead brats. Blow it out your big fat ass._

"I know it sounds crazy," he said, trying to sound diplomatic, "but just give me a chance to prove myself: what we're looking for is just up ahead. If you'll give me a few minutes, I'll find the power and bring it back here-"

"Not alone you won't," said Amanda, loudly enough to be heard by the others. "You're not well enough to go off your own, Gideon. I'm coming with you."

There were a few murmurs to the effect of "me too!" from the fringes of the crowd, and a handful of refugees stood up to join her. In the end, they ended up with a retinue of about four people not counting Amanda, most of them too boring for Gideon to bother committing to memory: their names were easily read directly from their thoughts, but he almost immediately retitled them Idiot 1, Idiot 2, Idiot 3 and Idiot 4 – if only because they honestly looked the part.

 _Don't let them see you hesitate._

 _Okay,_ Gideon thought. _No problem. I can sense the monsters long in advance: all I have to do is lead this gang of idiots into an ambush, and then run like hell. If I do find the weapons, I'll come back and say there was a terrible accident; if I find the route out of here, I'll just cut my losses and call it a day._

"Alright," he said wearily. "Y'all can come with me if you really want to. Best keep rugged up, though. It's not going to be an easy journey."

 _Just a pack of hungry snow leopards, that's all I need…_

* * *

Somewhere just outside the city limits, a small but formidable-looking assembly of figures shambled to a halt on a rooftop half-buried in one of the deeper snowdrifts. Almost all of them were dressed in massive parkas to keep out the Antarctic chill, and many of them still shivered despite the layers of insulation protecting them.

Composed of cockroach men, amphibians, lava-drinkers and other twisted mutations from across the manifold playgrounds of Bill's empire, these interlopers weren't built for this kind of biome, and few of them had ever been anywhere as bitterly as cold as this place; needless to say, they suffered terribly for it – even though their altered physiologies would not permit them to die so easily – and a few even shed tears of molten metal for their lost volcanic homes.

Only one of them remained unmoved by the cold, and she stood at the head of the group: in contrast to the heavy coats most of her followers wore, she was dressed in little more than a pair of jeans, a singlet, and the shredded remains of a jacket; her feet were bare, revealing toes too long and too crooked to be human; only a ragged hood protected the ruin of her scalp from the brutal winter gale.

She did not stir, even as the blizzard descended on them; she did not cry, for she had no tears left to shed – as she often put it; she didn't even speak, for by now her followers had learned to obey her commands without hearing a single word pass her lips. She merely stood, and waited.

Then, she caught the scent: the smoke from cooking fires, the vinegary tang of sweat and exhaustion, the spice of human terror mingled with a thousand different degrees of despair… but most hateful of all, that tiny, almost imperceptible stink of _hope_.

Her senses had changed in the months since she'd last felt that awful emotion, but there was no disguising hope. Sniffing the air, she followed the trail, mentally tracing its path across the snowdrift-smothered buildings, until at last she found its source.

She didn't need to order her retinue to follow her: they knew the look on her face well enough by now.

It was time for another lesson to begin.

* * *

Half an hour later, Gideon found himself trudging down a long and extremely cluttered hallway strewn with rubbish, banging his shins and biting back his two hundred and fifty-seventh expletive of the day.

So far, his little crew of adventurers hadn't found a single snow leopard. No monsters lying in wait, no fatal pitfalls, no loose handrails over jagged windowsills, no precariously-balanced piles of rubble – nothing that could have gotten rid of the losers tagging along with him.

No hidden cache of weapons, either.

No secret escape route leading out of the snowfields.

And more to the point, no way of recognizing _either_ of them.

About the only blessing he could count at that point was the fact that the last few buildings had been connected by subway, which at least spared them the trouble of freezing to death.

But just as he was starting to wonder if he should start running and hope that they couldn't catch up with him, he happened to glance up at a sign hanging on the wall just above a fork in the path, and let out a strangled gasp as the message swam into view.

"THIS WAY, YOU IDIOT," it read. Below, a small arrow pointed to the left.

Gideon blinked, hastily rereading the sign. But as far as he could tell, it was a no-smoking sign – nothing out of the ordinary about it.

And then, just as he was starting to wonder if he was seeing things, the sign changed again: "THIS WAY TO THE STOCKPILE OF WEAPONS," it read. "FABULOUS PRIZES TO BE WON." Then, as quickly as it had changed, it was a no-smoking sign again.

"Are you okay?" Amanda whispered.

It took Gideon exactly a fraction of a second to realize that whatever he'd just seen, Amanda and the others were completely oblivious to it.

 _Don't let them see you hesitate._

"Fine," he said shakily. "I think we're getting close."

"YOU'D BETTER BELIEVE IT," said the sign. "BRACE YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK, KID, BECAUSE YOU'RE IN FOR ONE HELL OF A SURPRISE."

Trembling, Gideon followed the arrow down the left pathway. He knew this was a spectacularly bad idea: even if this _wasn't_ another one of Bill's sick games, someone (most likely the mysterious Mr A) was quite clearly playing the puppeteer behind this whole horrorshow, and judging by the quality of the directions so far, playing into their hands couldn't mean anything good for Gideon or any of the other refugees. But all the same, he continued onwards; after all, what else could he do under the circumstances? If Bill really was onto them, they were screwed – simple as that.

So, they could do little more than trudge helplessly onwards, every wall for the next two hundred yards emblazoned with another irreverent subliminal message from their unknown benefactor.

"FOLLOW THE CINDERBLOCK ROAD, MUNCHKIN."

"ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT."

"DON'T EVEN DREAM OF GIVING UP: YOU'LL BE DEAD BEFORE YOU EVER FIND THE ESCAPE ROUTE."

"I'M NOT KIDDING BY THE WAY. YOUR EYEBALLS WOULD GO WELL WITH GRAVY."

"TURN LEFT AND PREPARE TO CELEBRATE. ABOUT FINDING THE WEAPONS, NOT THE WHOLE EYEBALLS IN GRAVY BUSINESS. YOU CAN RELAX ABOUT THAT, BY THE WAY, I'VE HAD MY FILL OF EYEBALLS FROM THE BANDIT GANG WHO USED TO LIVE IN THIS BUILDING. THEY HAD VERY TASTY PEEPERS, INCIDENTALLY: LIKE RAVIOLI, ONLY MORE GELATINOUS. JUST AROUND THIS CORNER, GIDEON."

And as they rounded the final bend, the corridor ahead opened into a large, open room, filled from floor to ceiling with-

Gideon's eyes lit up.

When the note had promised him weapons, Gideon had been expecting an armoury of some kind: gun racks of AK-47s, boxes of grenades, an overflowing cornucopia of C4, something he'd recognize as conventional weapons at any rate. What he saw in the room beyond was indeed an armoury, but unlike anything he'd seen before: even from a distance, it was plainly obvious that the armaments that had stored here had not been designed by human beings.

Almost a hundred diamond-tipped lances hung from the opposite wall; Gideon couldn't even guess at what they were supposed to do, but he could tell from the all-too-distinctive shapes of triggers and ammo clips built into their gilded flanks that these weren't meant for jousting. Ahead of them, dozens of brutal-looking rifles sat in readiness, most of them more like glossy black cone shells than anything meant for human hands; even the stocks and grips looked more akin to moulded exoskeleton. Clusters of crystalline globes filled with swirling green mist hung from the ceiling like strings of sausages; plastic containers overflowed with spiked shields, each with its own handheld power-pack; several pairs of giant mechanical pincers sat atop trestle tables, along with a large stack of instruction manuals; at least a dozen pistol-like shapes sat in wicker baskets, many of them tipped with vicious-looking harpoons. And on the more mundane side of things, grappling hooks, medicine kits, pocket knives, mountaineering equipment, ration packs, and a whole host of other survival gear sat in readiness – neatly separated into cardboard boxes. There was even a fleet of shopping trolleys waiting by the door, waiting to be loaded up and carted away.

But as far as Gideon was concerned, all of that was secondary to the familiar shape sitting on a pedestal at the very heart of the room.

 _His amulet._

At first, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, or at the very least that wishful thinking was making him imagine things. But then he took a step closer, and saw the antique brass housing with the tiny green gem at the centre, and all doubts were gone from his mind.

The pendant that Mabel had smashed so many months ago _was sitting less than ten feet away from him._

With telekinesis, he wouldn't need to play at being a seer to the refugees; he could rule them by force if need be. As long as he applied enough shock and awe, he didn't have to worry about anyone losing faith in him, much less trying to lynch him. Come to think of it, he wouldn't even need the protection of the refugees anymore: he could just march straight for the exit and kill anything that dared stand in his way.

And then-

"So this is what you meant for us to find?" Amanda whispered. "This is how we're going to fight the Henchmaniacs?"

"What did I tell you, Many?" one of the Idiots muttered. "He's a _seer!_ It's just like in the legends! The time of myths is back again, and now we have prophets and sorcerers of our own! We have an oracle!"

 _Oh, you have no idea, little man. Give me half a minute, and I'll show_ you _sorcery._

Gideon was smiling now, a teeth-baring rictus he hadn't worn in what felt like years. After months of enforced weakness, he could finally reclaim everything that had been taken from him and more; it was just like that first moment after escaping the prison right at the start of Weirdmageddon, except this time he didn't have anyone to answer to – only _himself._ And to be honest, other than Mabel, was there anyone else in his life that had ever been worth a damn? With telekinesis, anything was possible, including the acquisition of greater power, and perhaps a chance to challenge Bill _in person._

Unable to wipe the smirk off, he took a step towards the pedestal – only for Amanda to reach out and grab him by the shoulder. "Gideon, wait," she said urgently.

"I'm _done_ waiting!" he shot back.

"Would you just listen to me for a minute? We don't know who put this stuff here, or if they were planning on coming back here. For all we know, this place has been booby-trapped."

"It hasn't."

"How can you tell?"

"Because I have a _functioning pair of eyes."_

Amanda almost managed an expression of disapproval, before the familiar look of maternal concern crept back across her face. "You're _sure_ you weren't a teenager before all this?"

"Not the time for jokes, Mandy. The power I told you about is right here; someone's got to go about claiming it."

Once again, though, Amanda held him back. "Look, just let me go first," she said urgently. "That way, I'll-"

"-have another opportunity to treat me like your own kids, I know! You're very good at taking your grief and making it _my_ problem!"

A flicker of something like anger rippled across Amanda's face, and vanished just as quickly. "Nice, Gideon," she said calmly. " _Real_ nice. Did you speak to your own mother like that?"

Suddenly, Gideon wanted to hurt her. He wanted to wipe that sweet, sensitive caring look right off her dumb, cow-eyed face, and bring out every last drop of depression she'd been doing her best to hide. He wanted to make her just as miserable as she'd made him feel for every day she'd cared for him. He wanted to make her feel _exactly_ like the waste of human life that she really was. He wanted to make her suffer, and he wanted to do so in a way that would make all the physical torture in the universe pale into insignificance.

So he darted in and out of her mind, staying just long enough to pluck a tiny snippet of information out of her brain and read it in detail. It wasn't much, really – just a quick synopsis of Amanda's worst nightmare, but it was all the ammunition he needed.

"I _would_ if she treated me the way you've been treating me!" he snarled. "You've smothered me so much in the last few days, I wouldn't be surprised if your own kids ran away at the first opportunity they got! God, I think Weirdmageddon must have been the best thing that ever happened to your little brats; you know why? Because even if it killed them, they'd still be happy, because they'd be rid of _you_ at last!"

Amanda flinched – actually physically recoiled, as if she'd been slapped – and Gideon knew he'd drawn blood: the look of parental concern was gone, replaced by a raw, reproachful look of purest hurt. There were even tears in her eyes. And yet it didn't feel like a victory. That sense of release he'd felt back when he'd laid down the law to mother or father was gone, and in its place, Gideon felt only a dull ache that felt uncannily like shame.

But he had no time to reflect on it, whatever it was. Tearing himself out of Amanda's grip, he launched himself through the room, making a beeline for the pedestal. He wasn't exactly the fastest of the group, but with Amanda reeling from shell-shock and the others being forced to squeeze past her, he had an easy head-start to the amulet. As the pedestal loomed ahead of him, he was dimly aware of Amanda tearfully shouting after him, "Gideon, wait! What if there's traps?" But by then, he didn't care. All that mattered was getting his hands on the one thing that could guarantee his survival.

Reaching out to grab the amulet, he felt his outstretched fingers brush its surface…

…and realized too late that he'd just made the exact mistake that Amanda had feared he'd make: he'd blundered headfirst into a trap. This wasn't a mystical amulet; this wasn't his source of telekinetic power; this was something _else._

A moment later, the entire pedestal erupted into a column of searing white light, tearing though Gideon's body and unmooring his psyche, ripping his conscious mind away from his senses and casting it out across the length and breadth of Bill's kingdom.

* * *

"What are we going to do with you, Gideon?"

There was a long pause as Gideon belatedly realized he was still alive. Opening his eyes, he was immediately dazzled by a cascade of harsh light pouring in on him from all angles: everywhere he looked, there was nothing but unrelenting light; no walls, no floor, no ceiling, no landmarks, no way of telling if he was outside or indoors – nothing but glaring, merciless light.

Squinting desperately, he tried to find the source of the voice, but even with his eyes shaded, all he could see was a vaguely human-shaped silhouette hovering in the distance… and getting steadily closer. He could just about recognize the fact that the figure was wearing a hooded cloak, and it appeared to have the basic dimensions of a human woman, but the glare was still too bright to recognize any of the specifics.

"Who are you?" he whispered.

"A fellow oracle," the voice replied.

As far as he could tell, it was indeed woman's voice, soft and serene and without malice, but there was no way of telling if the speaker was human or not: every now and again, he thought he noticed subtle hints of alien power rippling in and out of those dulcet tones, but it was impossible to envision the being that might be uttering them.

"You don't know me, but you know our mutual friend: Stanford Pines. When he last strayed beyond reality and sanity, I was there to catch him. I did my best to guide him along his path, to usher him towards the best of all possible futures. At the time, I'd hoped that he might one day help to bring an end to Bill Cipher's reign of terror – though I doubt that Ford would have imagined the role he'd play in those events. Now, established history has been thrown off-course by events beyond our control, and the possible futures I once foresaw have been devoured by Weirdness. Now, there are new prophecies to be made, new visions to be experienced, and it seems I must play my part once again if it means saving what little remains of your world."

"Does that mean you're here to help me?" Gideon asked, hoping against hope that the answer would be yes.

"I'm not _here,_ Gideon. Your world is closed to me. The amulet you touched was a transmitter, a means of sending your thoughts beyond the boundaries of Bill Cipher's playground. I would have preferred not to use this device, considering its origins, but unfortunately, the Axolotl has run out of options – hence why you and I must talk."

The silhouette was standing over him now, and for the first time, Gideon felt a distinct ripple of fear as he belatedly realized just how tall the stranger was. Distances and length was hard to establish here, but he had the very distinct impression that she would have been taller than Manly Dan Corduroy. And looking up at the stranger's hooded features, he knew at once that this being definitely wasn't human.

"And so, we're back to the question we started off with: what _are_ we going to do with you, Gideon?"

For a moment, Gideon could only stare in astonishment at the face under the hood, at the vivid purple skin, at the faintly luminescent eyes staring back at him – all seven of them.

"What are you?" he whispered.

"I am **Jheselbraum the Unswerving** ," said the apparition. "As I said, I am a fellow Oracle. And I am _very_ concerned about the state of this world and its people – and about you in particular."

"Uh?"

"I seem to recall one of the more salient points in the Axolotl's message to you was 'stop thinking of people as marks.' You appear to be having problems with that."

"Wha?"

"You recall your escape plan – the one that would have left those refugees _and_ your parents stranded in the middle of nowhere? Or perhaps your intentions to force them using the power of the amulet? Should we settle for the things you said to Amanda?"

"Er, about that-"

"Don't bother lying to me, Gideon. Our minds are currently linked; dishonesty is all too obvious from here." The Oracle's voice remained soft and perfectly even, but her disapproval was clearly audible in every word she spoke. "You've tried to reform, you've turned against Bill, you even came close to an epiphany, but you still haven't dealt with the most basic element of the problem at hand: empathy – or your lack thereof."

Gideon laughed nervously. "I-I know I haven't been the best role model on the planet, but I was concerned for my safety! What would have happened if I hadn't been able to find those weapons? The refugees would have turned on me! I mean, you can't blame me for having an exit strategy, can you? And as for what I said to Amanda, I was under stress at the time-"

"No lying, please."

"Look, maybe I was a little harsh on her, but you can't honestly expect me _not_ to snap at her after the way she treated me the last few weeks-"

Jheselbraum rolled all seven of her eyes. "Please don't make me repeat myself, Gideon. She treated you with nothing but kindness, asking nothing of you in return, and you repaid her compassion by doing your very best to hurt her. And if you truly believe that the refugees would have killed a child, then you understand nothing about the human mind for all the power you've been granted over it."

"Power?" Gideon echoed. " _What_ power? All I can do is read minds, and after the last few months of migraines, it's been no help to me whatsoever."

"Only because you've yet to master it. As the Axolotl told you, the curse can develop into a gift, but you've yet to explore those complexities, and believe I know why: you don't want to, not really."

In spite of himself, Gideon managed to actually muster a few weak sparks of anger at this. "Alright," he snapped. "You've made it clear you don't like me: break the link and send me back to Earth, so you can go talk to someone you _want_ to talk to – Stanford Pines, for choice-"

"I can't. This link was meant for you and you alone. You are the only living being in this reality that my tuition was intended for."

"You've got a very funny way of showing it-"

"And more to the point, Ford might have the power to hear my voice, at least now that Bill's machinations have imbued him with Sight of his own, but..."

Jheselbraum paused, and for the first time since she'd introduced herself, Gideon saw a look of something not unlike pain cross her alien features. "But he would not be able to recognize it. It would be lost amidst the deluge of information that threatens to drown him: Ford's Sight does not merely encompass the mind or even the future, but every facet of the universe and beyond. In all too many of his futures, I see horror, madness and a dark apotheosis descending upon him… and I don't know if his anchor to reality will be enough to save him from himself."

She sighed. "And so you are the only being in this reality who can interact with this link; you are the only one who can See the way I can, which is why I am obliged to help you understand the things which prevent you from doing so."

Gideon blinked. "Hang on," he muttered. "Hang on _just_ a minute. You're saying I can _See_ the way you can – does that mean I can predict the future?"

"Possible futures, yes. With skill and grace, it is possible to nudge events along a path of your choosing, and avoid timelines where disaster becomes inevitable."

There was a pause, as Gideon did his best to hide the sudden surge of excitement crackling up and down his brain. "Well," he said at last. "How would I be able to do that? I mean, is it as simple as focussing my telepathy on something different or-"

Jheselbraum smiled, lips quirking ever-so-enigmatically. "So you _do_ want to stay. Good for you. Unfortunately, the reason why precognition interests you is the very reason why it won't work for you."

" _What?_ Why?"

"As I said, you lack empathy."

"What does _that_ have to do with anything?!"

"You don't really want to know what people think or how, Gideon," said Jheselbraum sadly. "You want to know how to make them obey your will. You don't want to understand the world around you: you want the world to conform to your desires. Just look at how you dealt with telepathy: it didn't occur to you to immerse yourself in the thoughts of others until Axolotl's letter told you to do so. And the one time you read a mind with the intent of actually _seeing_ through their eyes, it frightened you so much you never dared try again: the moment you came close to an epiphany, you fled in terror."

"No I didn't! I was just-"

"The moment you actually felt guilt for what you'd done to your parents, the moment you came close to acknowledging that you were at fault, you backed away and never dared delve that deep a second time – because the sense of shame _terrified_ you. Again, you didn't want to understand. And even before you gained this power, you had no desire to comprehend others: do you remember how you attempted to win Mabel's heart? You didn't really romance her, you forced her, entrapped her with peer pressure until she surrendered. Time and again, you've approached the situation at hand without ever _caring_ about the opinions of others, merely by manipulating it or forcing it, until you finally found yourself up against opponents that couldn't be manipulated or forced."

"But I've changed!" Gideon insisted, a little more defensively than he'd hoped. "I'm trying to be a different person!"

"Trying, but not always succeeding. You still haven't lost sight of your selfishness. And it's because of that vestigial sense of empathy that you can't learn precognition: you would focus only on _your_ future and what could benefit you; you'd ignore the future of everyone around you, and that wilful blindness would keep you from ever mastering the art."

"Okay, so maybe I don't _need_ precognition-"

"It's not just foresight that would fail you, Gideon: now that you've learned how to build your mental muscles, the higher realms of telepathic power should be open to you – mind-to-mind communication, remote viewing, psychic guidance, mental radar, even telekinesis. But you won't learn any of them, because you insist on denying the very things that make them possible."

"Oh come on, you can't know that! You haven't even seen me try yet!"

"I don't need to, because you're not going to do so. Telepathy is more than just a simple matter of intuiting thoughts, Gideon: it's forming a connection with another mind; you don't want to form connections, you don't want to really interact with – what was it you called them? "Mouth-breathing fools?" You only want to take what you want and give nothing back. You're still thinking like a con artist, and as long as you choose to do so, you'll never achieve your true potential – and your chances against Bill never rise higher than abysmal. Exactly what he intended when he first imbued you with this particular form of telepathy."

There was a pause, as Gideon considered this.

"Is there… a way of making me understand?" he asked tentatively. "I mean, if you understand telepathy as well as you say, shouldn't you be able to teach me how to psychically empathize-"

Once again, Jheselbraum sighed – this time not in exasperation, but in sorrow. "It's not a matter of psychically empathizing, it's _empathizing at all._ You keep getting within reach of it, and yet you keep shying away the moment you try to seize it."

"But can you teach me?"

"Empathy cannot be taught, Gideon: it has to be learned – and mastered – independently. Through this mental link, it _is_ possible for me to show you the path and perhaps even light the way, but you will have to walk it alone. And it will be a very difficult, very painful process, to say nothing of how you'll react to having your sense of empathy jumpstarted. Do you really want this, or do you want to try and find a means on your own?"

Gideon could only stare for a moment. "After everything you've just told me, you still want to give me the option?"

"I don't want anything out of this arrangement, except perhaps the chance to save your world – and to ensure that what friends I have in your world survive this debacle. I'm not here to force anything on you, Gideon. I'm here to teach you the art – if you will accept my teachings. Once you have embraced your empathy, we can begin, but not before."

There was a long pause, as Gideon silently considered his options.

"Alright," he said at last. "I accept. Just…" He took a deep breath, and braced himself for the worst. "Just try not to hurt me too badly."

Jheselbraum gave Gideon a pitying look. "I'm not going to be the one hurting you, Gideon," she said gently. "You only need to fear the crimes you've committed, and how your conscience will punish you for them once it is finally awakened."

"It's going to be like the time I read my mom's mind, right?"

"Worse. The only compensation I can offer is that the way out of the snowfields will be plainly obvious once this lesson is at an end: it's a psychically-activated teleporter, and you'll find it under the pedestal."

And with that, the Oracle reached down and placed her hands on either side of his head.

"Good luck," she whispered. "When the times comes, we will talk again – as oracle to oracle."

A moment later, an electric shock tore through Gideon's brain and all he knew from then on was a blind flurry of memories and emotions, spiralling downwards through his experiences and into unconsciousness.

* * *

"What _happened_ to him?"

"I don't know! He passed out the moment he touched the amulet and I haven't been able to wake him up! You're the doctor here, I thought you'd have some idea."

"Well, he's still breathing and I'm not detecting any unusual heart sounds, but unless you've got an EEG machine, there's no way of guessing what's happening inside his head."

 _Shock and terror, as every word Gideon ever said to his parents is repeated, louder and harsher and crueller than ever before, every open-handed slap and handful of broken glass perfectly replicated. He doesn't know how he feels beyond those first two emotions, because nothing he feels makes any logical sense. For some reason, the memories are changing, for somehow he's not the one saying the words this time around: he's the victim, cowering and begging for mercy before an unrelenting monster._

"Where's everyone else?"

"They're getting the weapons together; I decided to take Gideon back here before he got any worse."

"Speaking of which, what's this in his hands?"

"That's the amulet from the pedestal. He won't let go of it. Every time I've tried, he starts crying again. Should he be twitching like that?"

"For god sakes, _he's_ the bloody psychic, Amanda. Best guess, he's dreaming: you can see he's gone into REM sleep."

 _Now Gideon is romancing Mabel; they're being rowed across the lake by McGucket, and the overtures are already in play. Mabel is slowly wilting, unable to say no… but as the demands become more insistent and more unpleasant, the memory begins to change, until at last he's sitting in Mabel's seat. In a way, he is Mabel. He wants to say no; he just wants to be friends, but the monster now sitting across from him won't accept anything other than blind assent, and he can only nod weakly, trying desperately not to break down in tears._

"Alright, here's a question you _can_ answer, smartass: what the hell are you doing up here? Why aren't you back at the campsite with everyone else?"

"Because we've just had some very worrying new arrivals. I thought Gideon should know before it gets any worse."

"What kind of new arrivals? Is it the Henchmaniacs? Is it Bill?"

"No. Truth be told, I honestly don't know what to make of them. All I know is that they want a captive audience."

 _Again and again, the Pines twins flee in terror as Gideon assaults them again and again, sometimes armed with telekinesis, sometimes with the improvised shrink ray, sometimes at the controls of a giant robot, but always on the attack, stealing their home away from them and leaving them helpless before his might. And with every assault, he feels less like himself and more like the twins, forever menaced by an opponent without mercy or reason or anything approaching logical goals._

"Then why are we still standing here? Where can we run to?"

"Nowhere. They're blocking the exits; the only way we can run is back the way you came, and I don't much fancy playing tag in the ruins with this lot."

"In other words, you want us to surrender."

"Just to buy time until your friends come back with the big guns."

"Not possible: we still don't how to use the damn things."

"Well, we're screwed. On the upside, it might not be as bad as we think: whoever these characters are, I don't think they're out to kill us. From the looks of things, they're conducting some kind of sermon…"

 _And now he's lashing out at Amanda, after everything she's done for him, after all the times she did her best to help him. Once again, Gideon stands in Amanda's place, and feels the same shock and hurt and pain tear through him – even though he knows he isn't Amanda, even though he understands that the voice howling in his direction belongs to him._

"Alright, then. Let's head back. But be ready to hide Gideon if the worst comes to the worst. If these things have a taste for human flesh, I don't want to see him hurt."

 _It's taken a long journey, but at last he realizes what these visions make him feel, beneath all the confusion and terror._

 _Guilt._

* * *

Gideon's first waking sensation was of warmth, a deep reassuring warmth enclosing him on all sides.

He was wrapped in a blanket, and someone was holding him close, keeping him nestled in their arms like a baby. No surprises there: he'd always been very small for his age, and his illness had left him so frail that he could probably be carried around like an infant anyway. Also unsurprisingly, he still had the transmitter clutched in one hand. But who was holding him?

Opening his eyes, he realized to his astonishment that it was Amanda who was holding him; all the more surprising, there was no resentment on her face, no disgust for everything he'd said to her when he was last consciousness.

 _You've forgiven me? After everything I said, you've forgiven me?_

A ripple of anger sparked in the back of his head, as Gideon belatedly remembered just how much he hated being treated like a kid. For a split second, he wanted to struggle free of Amanda's grasp, to shout obscenities in her face, to do something that would make her let go. But he couldn't: some new sensation strangled his voice before he could raise it in anger. In fact, the more he tried to speak, the more he wanted to apologise – and more he thought about it, the more it frightened him. He couldn't remember feeling _anything_ remotely like this before, and the awareness of that crushing pressure in his chest only made him feel a thousand times more vulnerable and weak.

But he couldn't bring himself to ignore it: he had the power to do so, but he didn't want to. In point of fact, he wasn't sure _what_ he wanted in that moment. So instead of acting, he simply closed his eyes and let Amanda's warmth lull him into complacency once again.

And that was when he became aware of the voice echoing across the room.

"Heed my words, friends," it proclaimed. "I stand before you not as a bandit, not as a monster, but as a preacher. I speak for the Society of the Enduring."

Gideon opened his eyes once again and craned his neck in the direction of the voice: it turned out that Amanda was sitting at the very back of the campsite, surrounded on all sides by terrified-looking refugees. But blocking almost every single exit was a gaggle of vicious-looking figures: there couldn't be much more than thirty of them, but most were so imposing that nobody wanted to take their chances – even if the refugees had numbers on their side. These new arrivals were quite clearly not human, and only the fact that most of them were too humanoid to belong to the Henchmaniacs kept Gideon from panicking.

There were men with flesh made of molten rock and metal, human-shaped agglomerations of live rats, six-foot-tall cockroaches with antennae like bullwhips, agonized lepers whose skin had turned to bleached bone, dozens of ropy tendrils strung into the forms of arms and legs and heads, half-dead monster caught in a continuous loop of decomposition and rejuvenation, and a whole squad of belligerent-looking fishmen with sharklike jaws and webbed feet – among which stood the preacher.

This could only be the Society of the Enduring.

All of them were thinking the same thing:

 _Give us oblivion,_ their minds howled. _Let it end. Let it end. Let it end. Let it end. Let it end. Let it end._

"You intend to start a revolution," said the preacher out loud. We can tell as much. We've seen it far too many times. You've set off on a quest to dethrone Bill Cipher… and we are here to tell you that your efforts are in vain. You cannot hope to overthrow God. It has been tried before, a thousand times before, and all attempts have failed. You see the marks upon our bodies, the mutation and disease? This is the punishment Bill has inflicted on us for daring to imagine we might challenge the eternal, and we are the only survivors of armies a hundred thousand strong. Do not throw your lives away on futile hope: join us, and embrace the only creed worth accepting. Embrace _survival."_

"You want us to join Bill!" shouted an angry voice from somewhere nearby. "You want us to be his playthings!" A chorus of equally-infuriated voices roared in agreement.

"We are all Bill's playthings, friend," said the preacher. "You are his toys, just as we are. But we have a choice as to the role we play in his games: we can blindly follow his designs, we can pointlessly struggle against them… or we can survive. We can cling to life in spite of everything thrown in our direction, and endure and struggle and survive until Bill finally loses interest and wipes us from existence. That is the way of the Society of the Enduring. That is how we win: we become worthless toys and are thrown from the nursery into the void of nonexistence. No more fear. No more horror. Nothing but the peace of oblivion."

"But we were promised a chance!" cried out a lone voice in the crowd. "Our oracle is out there searching for weapons-"

"You entrust your fate to a false prophet," the preacher thundered back. "And he has already abandoned you in this place, to try and divine some meaning from the lies he purveyed as truth. There is only one truth, and that is the truth our mistress teaches us – the truth she will teach all of you."

For a moment, Gideon considered his options. Once again, the safest thing to do would be to slip out of Amanda's arms and sneak away: as soon as the Society realized that their "false prophet" was sitting among them, they'd almost certainly kill him – or convince the refugees to kill him themselves.

But at the last minute, he stopped. He wasn't entirely sure why: maybe it was the logical possibility that he might get caught anyway, maybe it was that inexplicable crushing sensation that the thought of running stirred. Whatever the case, he found himself slipping gently out of Amanda's grasp, tucked the transmitter into his coat, and began tiptoeing gently through the crowd – Amanda herself hurrying after him.

"Your false prophet has told you many things," the preacher continued. "But now that he has gone, we can begin the revelation. It will not be gentle, but-"

"Excuse me," said Gideon loud. "I'm standing right here, in case you hadn't noticed."

There was a pause, as all eyes turned in his direction.

 _Brilliant,_ he thought. _I've gotten their attention. What the hell do I do now?_ In the back of his mind, some new and unfamiliar impulse added, _At least they aren't going to hurt anyone._ And once again, Gideon was at a loss to explain it.

For a second, it looked as though the preacher was going to say something, but a sharp hiss from the shadows silenced him.

"I understand, mistress," he murmured, and shrank back into the darkness.

Then, as one, the Society bowed as their mistress stepped into the light.

Unlike the others, she was dressed in rags, her emaciated body barely protected from the elements. Her face was hidden by a tattered hood, but Gideon could clearly see that she wasn't human: the veins on her right arm gleamed like polished chrome, her nails solid iron; the flesh on left arm was smooth and shiny like porcelain, its surface cracked and fissured like the skin of a broken doll; her spindly legs were layered in shiny black carapace, and more like bones carved from obsidian than anything human; below them, she stood on tridactyl claws like those of a bird of prey.

But when she drew back her hood…

Her neck was lined with gills, her features were starved and hatchet-sharp, her once-glorious red hair had been reduced to a sparse mass of crimson tufts, but for all the devastation that had been inflicted on her there was no mistaking the face of Wendy Corduroy.

"You," she hissed. "How are you _still_ alive after everything you've done?"

There was a rumble of confusion from the refugees.

"What's she talking about, Gideon?" Amanda whispered.

 _Oh god, she's going to tell everyone._

"After all the people who've died in the last year," Wendy plunged onwards, "all the people who've had to suffer because of what Bill did to this planet, after all the horrors I've seen, you're the one who's still here. _**Dipper's dead, and you're alive."**_

Gideon blinked. "What?"

"If I was looking for a sign that there's no justice in the universe, I've found it. All that pain and misery, and you're the one who hasn't changed a bit. You've lost weight, you've lost your stupid hairdo, and you've levelled up from huckster to prophet, but you're still the same hateful little liar, **and you're still alive."**

Her eyes flashed red and black, two crimson halos lost in infinite darkness.

"What did you do, Gideon? What did you do for Bill that made him give you a congregation? How many people did you kill or torture? I want to know, Gideon, so I can think of a way to make you suffer exactly like Bill's playthings have suffered."

Gideon floundered. "Uh, Wendy, you're really not making sense right now. I mean, you saw me back at the Fearamid – I was working with you to stop Bill!"

"And that's why you're up to your old tricks, is it? You're a different person, is that it? I'm expected to believe that you're better off than any other survivor I've met because _you've changed?!_ " She spat out a thick plume of tarry-black sputum; it hissed and smoked when it hit the ground. "Lie to me again and I'll eat your _fucking_ heart if you have one."

"Well what happened to _you?"_ Gideon demanded. "What's with the gills and the metal and the weird legs, and-"

"I accepted the gifts I was offered. There's monsters out here in the wastelands, little man: the Acolytes of the Deep, the Feasters, Those-Who-Dwell-In-Ruin, the Imbibers of the Void – they all made offers, and I accepted all of them once I realized that there was no point in fighting Bill."

Gideon took a deep breath. "Okay, now I know something's wrong. Every time we met previously, you were the most gung-ho out of everyone at the Mystery Shack – you _never_ gave up! Last time we fought, you said you were going to wear my butt like a rhinestone slipper, and if you'd had more time, you probably would have done exactly that! Why the hell would you surrender now? What are you doing here, leading these… lunatics?"

"You obviously weren't listening to my preacher," said Wendy, a monstrous grin splitting her pallid face in two. "I'm here to save people from their delusions. I'm here to help them see reality, to understand that there's no fighting Bill. There's only survival, and the chance to make Bill as miserable as possible, until there's no fun to be had in torturing us any longer. And you know how I found that out? Because Dipper isn't coming back: Bill got bored with him and had the Shapeshifter eat him. And that's how it has to be from: that's only victory left to us, thanks to your boss."

"Look, I'm sorry about that, I really am, but it's not true anymore, Wendy. I've found something that might help us stop Bill-"

"Oh yes, I'm sure. And I'm really supposed to believe you, am I? You really think you're back in your tent, don't you, you little shit? You think you're singing Li'l Old Me and having everyone dance to your tune, _don't you?"_

"Absolutely not, I-"

"Why don't you tell them?!" Wendy roared. "If this is all part of your big reformation, why don't you tell all the people here who you really are? Don't be shy, Gideon: we're all equals here – unless you still feeling like the big kid in the small town."

Once again, Gideon found himself transfixed by the spotlight, frozen in the staring eyes of every single refugee in the building. The seconds ticked by: not for the first time, he considered dodging the matter. After all, there was no way of telling what would happen if he confessed the truth. Maybe they really would lynch him, or maybe it'd just make them join the Society without another word; whatever the case, nothing good could come of it. Better to lie: after all, Wendy was weird and monstrous enough to be written off as another lying and/or demented monster, so bullshitting his way out would probably work – if Gideon was in luck, of course. And if all else failed, he could run for it and leave them to whatever Wendy planned on doing to them.

 _But that's what she expects, isn't it? That's just what I would have done in the old days._

"Just what I thought," Wendy sneered. "You're still just another cowardly self-important little-"

"Con artist."

There was a gasp from the crowd.

"I was a con artist," Gideon continued. "Back before all this began, I pretended to be a psychic and bilked a lot of people for every last dime in their pocket. And that's not all: I hurt a lot of people, and not just in the emotional or financial sense, either. I really, _really_ hurt them. I hurt my parents, I hurt my friends, I hurt the people who admired and respected me, and I hurt them in ways you probably wouldn't believe. Trying to cut someone's tongue out was just the tip of the iceberg. And when that wasn't enough for me to get my way, I made a deal with Bill. I was working for him right when Weirdmageddon started, but – well, for lack of a better word, I had a change of heart. I joined a rebellion against him, and we _almost_ managed to stop Bill once and for all: the only reason why it didn't work was because we couldn't cooperate in time – _and that's how I know it can be done!"_

He took a deep breath; he didn't know where most of this had come from, but it somehow felt good to get it off his chest. Maybe it was the new sense of conscience lurching to life inside his head, or maybe it was the simple fact that he'd been keeping secrets for so long, it was a welcome change just to _talk_ about them with someone who wasn't his enemy or his employee or his target. But he still wasn't finished yet.

"Once Weirdmageddon went global, Bill decided it'd be really funny if I actually had psychic powers, which is why I spent the last few months lying in bed, crying over nothing. And when I said there was something here that could help us stop Bill, I meant it. Amanda and I found a whole roomful of weapons like nothing we've ever seen before: I don't know what they can do, but I'm willing to bet that they can give us a _chance_ against the Henchmaniacs. Now, if anyone thinks I've been hiding the truth for too long, you're welcome to leave right this second… and if you think I'm to blame for helping Bill come to power, you'd be more than justified if you wanted to take revenge. But if you're still willing to stick with me-"

There was a rumble of activity, and suddenly everyone was on their feet, lining up alongside Gideon.

For a moment, there was only a disbelieving silence as Wendy's face contorted in disbelief.

Then, she let out another low snarl of rage. "No," she thundered. "You don't get off that easily, not after all the lies you told-"

"He's telling the truth," said Amanda helpfully. "Archie and Watford are bringing back a whole trolley of the stuff back here. I mean, just look at this…" She reached into her pocket and drew out a harpoon-tipped diamond-shaped device no bigger than the average Remington derringer. "See?"

Wendy's eyes narrowed. "Right. _Very_ plausible. I'm supposed to believe that someone with close ties to Bill wouldn't have a few magical artefacts on hand? What game are you playing, Gideon? You've got everyone lying for you already, so what's the endgame?"

"I'm trying to stop Bill," Gideon shot back. "I'm pretty sure that's what Dipper would have wanted-"

"DON'T YOU DARE EVEN _**SAY HIS NAME!"**_ Wendy roared, her eyes once again a nightmarish red-and-black. And as her mouth gaped open, her teeth sank down into her gums, and a new set of needle-sharp fangs slid into view, leaving her with the jagged maw of a shark.

But Gideon suddenly wasn't in the mood to keep quiet anymore. "Why?" he demanded. "Do you think he'd have agreed to lying down and giving up?"

 _Oh god, why did I have to say that out loud?_

Suddenly, Wendy's axe was in her hand and raised to strike.

"Alright," she growled. "Lesson's over."

And with that, she _leapt_ at Gideon; at the last moment, Amanda grabbed him under his arms and dived away, but Wendy was already winding up for another swing of the axe.

But before she could bring it down, four refugees dived in from the sidelines and dogpiled her, dragging her to the ground with all the force they could muster. Less than a second later, the first one tumbled away, blood pouring from a massive gash in his stomach; another howled in agony as Wendy's beartrap-like jaws clamped down hard on his left cheekbone; the other two were simply flung aside, crashing headlong into walls – but by then, Gideon was already running.

"EVERYONE HEAD FOR THE BACK STAIRS, NOW!" he yelled.

For good measure, Amanda drew the diamond-derringer again and fired – not at Wendy, not at the Society members marching into view, but at the roof. Its harpoon-like tip spat a bolt of eye-searing energy directly into the ceiling, spraying the oncoming Society with a shower of shrapnel and rocking the room so violently that Gideon worried that the building itself might collapse around them. On the upside, along with enough chunks of rubble to send the less-armoured Society members ducking for cover, the blast enveloped the room in a huge cloud of dust, neatly covering their escape.

Not all the refugees made it, of course: in spite of Gideon's shouted orders, almost twenty of them stayed back to cover their escape, attacking the Society with the few battered firearms they'd brought with them from the shantytown. But long before Gideon turned to run, he clearly saw Wendy hacking her way through them, casually soaking up bullets without even flinching.

Eventually, Amanda scooped him up under her arm and sprinted for the exit, herding the remaining refugees up the stairs as quickly as possible.

"Where are we going?" Amanda panted, as the roars of rage slowly faded into the distance.

"Back to the cache," Gideon replied. "The exit's right under the pedestal, apparently."

Then, as they continued upwards, he belatedly remembered that he had something important to add – if only for the sake of his newfound empathy.

"About what I said earlier… I know it was probably the worst thing that's ever been said to you, and I want you to know that-"

"I think apologies can wait, Gideon. As much as it's nice to hear a good old-fashioned 'I'm sorry' every now and again, I don't think now's the best time: if you really are planning on reforming, a good starting point would be learning that there's a time and place for everything."

"Fair enough…"

* * *

"Well," said Nyarlathotep. "That went spectacularly, didn't it?"

Jheselbraum eyed the Outer God disapprovingly, a look of distaste arcing off her normally-serene features. "You know I don't like treating this as a spectator sport," she said icily.

"Oh, we both know you like to watch, Deep Purple."

For a moment, the mountainside echoed with the distinctive sound of Jheselbraum trying not to groan in exasperation. "Could you kindly _not_ call me that? I'd rather not be connected with that band any more than I absolutely have to."

"As you wish. Still, I think Gideon's going to do quite well for himself, don't you? As soon as he's safe enough to continue his lessons with you, I imagine he may actually make a fair-to-decent oracle."

"Maybe so," Jheselbraum admitted. "I'd still feel more comfortable if one of the best hopes for the salvation of Earth didn't have to teleconference with me via one of Yog-Sothoth's toys."

"You act as though he isn't strong enough to take the pressure. Believe me, exposure to Weirdness has toughened his psyche: if it hadn't, he would have been driven mad on the spot. Besides, I think he's more to worry about in the meantime. Tell me, do you think he stands a chance of escaping Wendy?"

"For now, yes. She'll catch up eventually: Bill selected her for the role of the Horseman of War for a very good reason. Now that she's had a chance to get her feelings off her chest, she won't bother talking next time. Next time, it'll be an ambush."

Nyrlathotep rubbed his hands eagerly. "Oooh, I can't wait. More importantly, I can't wait to see what Axolotl is going to do about it."

"And does the Axolotl know that you've been casually handing out mind-linking tools borrowed directly from the Gate the Key and the Guardian?"

"Implicitly, yes. He wants these recruits united with their goals: I directed Gideon to the cache, I made sure the cache had a means of communicating with you, and I made sure he survived. Other than that, no specifics are required."

"You really are a rotten bastard, do you know that?"

"Aw, you say the nicest things, darling," Nyrlathotep purred. "Let me see the disdain in _all_ your eyes, let me know you still care."

"Stop it. I know you're playing your own little game throughout all of this, _Pharaoh._ I've already been able to catch a few glimpses of it: I don't know what you're planning just yet, but I know you want something very specific from Axolotl, something you believe only _he_ can provide. And I think I know exactly what that is: you want to save your masterpiece."

"And that's what I like about you Jheselbraum. You always know – not enough to tell exactly what I'm thinking, but always know more than any entity in your neck of the woods… and you have no idea how much that excites me.."

"Too much information, thank you."

There was a muffled grunt of pain from somewhere off in the distance, as something partly human and partly spider writhed in pain against the chains affixed to her feet.

"Speaking of too much information," Jheselbraum added, "Why exactly are you dragging that Ananasi around with you?"

"Can't you read my mind, dear?"

"As I said, there are some things even I don't want to know."

"Very well then. Darlene here is just along for the ride: I'm keeping her in tow until I'm ready to signal her mighty ancestor."

"And I assume you know how dangerous the Weaver is."

"You would assume correctly."

"Just how many times can you play the roulette wheel until you lose?"

"You tell me: you're the Oracle."

"Very funny. I confess I barely have time to focus on your intricate games: I'm still too busy trying to figure out what to do about Dipper."

Nyarlathotep smirked. "You don't. Remember, you can't access this realm; some goes for anyone who's been touched by the Axolotl. If you want something done, I'm the facilitator, and Dipper will soon be a matter of my concern alone." His smirk widened. "It's going to be _good_. Trust me."

"One of these days, you're going to say that and actually mean it," Jheselbraum deadpanned.

And in that moment, there was a loud trill from the mobile phone in Nyarlathotep's pocket.

"Ah, and it seems our mutual friend has come to call. A moment, if you please…"

Clicking open the phone, Nyarlathotep trilled, "Mr A, lovely to hear from you! How's the merry chase going? Find any decent-"

" _Nyarlathotep, I really don't have time for witty repartee at present. It's all gone horribly wrong over here: Bill proved a lot quicker than I expected; he's on the verge of catching up with me."_

"Ah. So I take it your graffiti spooked him a little more than anticipated. Where are you?"

" _The Southern Void. I'm currently hiding under a dimensional inconsistency and hoping he can't recognize my energy signature while I'm still in a human vessel. If he finds me now, he'll kill me and my host. I hate to ask another favour, but-"_

"You want me to draw Bill away from the area long enough for you to escape, is that right?"

" _It'd be a big help, sure,"_ Axolotl muttered, scarcely bothering to hide his exasperation.

"Then I'll be there in two shakes of a flayed lambskin. You hang in there."

And before Axolotl could reply, Nyarlathotep hung up.

"Right," he said briskly. "It's been wonderful seeing you again, Oracle, but duty calls. You keep on forecasting the future and watching the present: believe me, it's going to be one _**hell of a show…"**_

And with that, he was off, dragging the struggling figure of the spider-woman behind him.

"Come along, Darlene!" the Outer God roared triumphantly. "It's time we summoned your grandmother: we have an Axolotl to save!"

* * *

A/N: Yes, yes, I know, I abided by ambiguous syntax in order to confuse you about which Horseman of the Apocalypse I meant when I said "first." I'm sorry. Also, I'm sorry if Jheselbraum appears to be channelling a bit of Pa'u Zhaan from Farscape. I couldn't resist. So, any thoughts on Gideon's stumbling towards true redemption, on what Mr Carter/Nyarlathotep intends to do about Dipper, about the Oracle, on what she's said about Ford?

Up next...

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	25. The Spider's Web

A/N: Two hundred reviews, ladies and gents, two hundred and four wonderful reviews - the first time any story of mine's reached this limit. Words cannot express just how grateful I am to all of you!

An immense thank you to all my viewers, reviewers, favouriters and followers: Hourglass Cipher, skywalkerchick1138, Kraven the Hunter, Northgalus2002, Carcer14, Blind-Eyephone, LoyalTheorist, Fantasy Fan 223, CrownedSteven, and our Guest!

Also, bidding a formal welcome to my weird new cover! Whaddaya think, ladies and gents: too much, too little, or just right?

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine. Also, neither is Werewolf: The Apocalypse, in case you were wondering where the hell the Weaver came from.

* * *

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* * *

"WHERE ARE YOU? **WHERE ARE YOU?!** _ **SHOW YOURSELF!"**_

Bill was quite literally scarlet with rage by now, his one eye little more than a pitch-black aperture in his titanic body. He'd grown to a truly gargantuan size by now, easily dwarfing most of the surrounding planets and blotting out the sun as he proceeded through the Weirdness-plagued system. And as his mood worsened, random currents of electric-blue energy crackled off his corporeal form in a maelstrom of raw power, vaporizing asteroids, shattering moons, tearing the already-ravaged planets in half and shaving several billion years off the lifespan of the local sun – dragging it into the Red Giant stage early and casting an even more apocalyptic light on the surrounding star system (if such a thing was possible).

Some distance away, the Axolotl took cover under a fold in space and tried not to move as the remains of the smashed planets rocketed past him.

This was the Southern Void, previously known as the Stobbleward System; once a relatively peaceful region of a galaxy just next-door to the Milky Way, it had long since been consumed by Weirdness. Now the once-placid darkness of local space eddied and swirled with stellar distortions, the whole thing dyed a lurid blue by the Henchmaniacs' interstellar vandalism, making the place look more like the inside of some terrible whirlpool than anything that could ever have supported life.

Here, the fabric of the universe was so threadbare that things from _outside_ could easily slip through the pinholes in the dimensional barriers.

And this was what it had been like _before_ Bill had lost his temper.

"COME ON OUT, AXOLOTL!" Bill roared, his voice deeper than ever before, echoing cataclysmically across space in clear defiance of conventional physics."YOU WANT TO FIGHT FOR THE FATE OF THIS UNIVERSE? _**WELL, I'M READY!**_ SHOW YOURSELF AND LET'S SEE JUST HOW TOUGH YOU REALLY ARE! IT TOOK ME A BILLION YEARS TO BREAK INTO THIS PODUNK REALITY, AND NOW THAT IT'S MINE, _**I'M NOT GONNA GIVE IT UP WITHOUT A FIGHT!"**_

Evidently, the graffiti back at the Fearamid had rattled Bill's cage quite thoroughly: he wasn't just angry anymore, but _frightened_ , shouting into the void for no other reason than to assuage his anxiety. If nothing else, he was certainly distracted from the breakouts going on back on Earth; mission accomplished, then.

Unfortunately, that left Axolotl and his host facing down the full force of the demented nacho's wrath, and with his own power still suppressed by the locks placed around this dimension, there wouldn't be much that Axolotl could do to defend himself if Bill caught him.

Worse still, there was clearly no way out of this star system: in the distance, he could already see the figures of the Henchmaniacs lining up along the border, getting ready to intercept anyone making a break for freedom. For now, he was trapped.

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! YOU SAY I'M ALL OUT OF SECOND CHANCES? YOU WANTED TO END THIS IN A DUEL TO THE DEATH? WELL, YOU GOT ONE!"

"Nyarlathotep," Axolotl muttered, "I could really, _really_ use that distraction right about now…"

* * *

"Don't make me do this," Darlene whispered. "Please, you don't have to do this."

Nyarlathotep offered her a smile that did not reach his eyes. "Getting cold feet, are we?" he purred. "I seem to recall you were more than happy to help me if it meant sparing your life. Have you decided your life isn't worth that much after all?"

"You never said we'd be getting _this_ close to her! If we call out to her now, we're going to kept swept up in the wake!"

"And?"

"Whaddaya _mean_ 'and!' We'll end up in her web, you imbecile!"

"You might, I won't. Besides, it can't be helped: this is the most effective place to carry out the summoning, and lives are at stake – very precious lives that might serve my purposes in the not-too-distant future – so it falls to you to make a sacrifice for the greater good."

"You think you actually know what that means? The Weaver does. She understood "the greater good better" than anyone in my end of the multiverse… and that's exactly why she shouldn't be here. Why do you think Ananasi like me tried so hard to leave our world in the first place? Nothing could stop her by the end! Please, just call the whole thing off while you still have a chance, you don't know what she's like."

"But I do. I've travelled far and wide since I gained access to the multiverse, and I know everything there is to know about the creator of your species, the Eternal Mother of Queen Ananasa. And I know that her lust for order is exactly what this chaotic little universe needs. As you said, her arrival here is inevitable: I just need you to speed things up a little, guide her to a place weak enough for her to punch through. All you have to do is call out to her, and your work here is done."

"Don't you _dare_ condescend to me, 'Carter,'" she snarled back. "I know exactly what the Weaver's gonna do to me. She'll hollow me out, burn away everything I am, fill what's left with Weaver-spirits and leave me calcified in stasis until the end of time. She'll make me a Server Drone, all function and no brain, just so she won't have to go to the trouble of actually killing me."

"Not my problem," said Nyarlathotep cheerily. "Now, let's get going. We have a god to save."

"There's nothing you can do to make me carry out the summoning; whatever you can do to me, it won't be anywhere near as bad as what _she'll_ do to me."

"Then I'll just have to see what happens when I offer up your sweet little niece and nephew in your stead."

Darlene's eyes widened in horror. "You wouldn't," she whispered. "You _couldn't…"_

" _ **I really wouldn't start hazarding guesses about what I can and can't do, Darlene,"**_ the Black Pharaoh growled. _ **"I've bathed in nuclear fire, drank deep from the river Styx, walked unscathed through the lightless Hadal depths, and basked in the Colour out of Space. I have feasted upon the hearts of a generation of children; I have walked with death and triumph hand-in hand across history, from the Sinking of Atlantis to the fall of Berlin; I have brought doom to dynasties untold, corrupted martyrs beyond counting and danced upon the graves of entire civilizations."**_

He paused, and cleared his throat. "So tell me," he continued, "how do you think Charlotte, innocent child that she is, will react when I start eating her brother one limb at a time? Do you think she'd be willing to conduct the summoning in your stead?"

"But I… I…"

"Why do you think I didn't just kill you the moment I found you, Darlene? There were over two hundred Ananasi loose in this dimension, and any one of them could have gotten the Weaver's attention, but you – and your dear little niblings – were the only spider-folk who had enough empathy to care for one another. So tell me, do you really think you could shrug off the deaths of your family as easily as you'd shrug off the death of your prey… or do you feel ready to cooperate with me?"

For a moment, it looked as if Darlene was about to salvage some last spark of defiance; but then the moment passed, and her eyes went dead and despairing, the all-too-familiar look of defeat spread across her face.

"When does it have to be done?" she asked dully.

Nyarlathotep's grin phosphoresced in the shadows of deep space. "There's no time like the present…"

There was a pause, and then a long, forlorn cry of despair echoed out across reality, crossing umbral barriers and piercing even the spirit world.

It hadn't been meant for the Weaver _per se_ : it had always been intended as a last-ditch attempt to contact Queen Ananasa… but the beloved queen of the werespiders was lost forever in the stasis in her opal prison, and so the cry for help could only be intercepted by her jailer. It hadn't been meant for the Weaver…

But her avatar descended nonetheless.

* * *

"You think I'm scared of you? YOU THINK I'M SCARED OF A _**GIANT NEWT?!**_ "

Axolotl sighed deeply. It was bad enough that Bill was clearly terrified out of his life: now the pointed maniac was resorting to bravado to cover it up.

"ARE YOU TRYING TO TRICK ME?" Bill bellowed. "WELL YOU _CAN'T!_ **I'VE OUTSMARTED YOU ONCE, I CAN DO IT AGAIN!** I DON'T NEED YOU ANYMORE! I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK I-"

The rest of Bill's speech was lost in the long, drawn-out shriek of something massive fracturing, the sound of a billion angle-grinders blended with the screams of a billion tortured souls and the shattering of eight hundred trillion miles of sculpted glass, all echoing through the mouth of hell and rammed brutally into an ear with the assistance of a red-hot chisel. It was a sound that defied all limits, a sound that could barely be coherently described, a sound that obliterated all rationality...

It was the sound of the barrier between dimensions being _ripped open._

The Axolotl looked up in disbelief, recognizing those horrendous sounds all too well, just in time to see a long, jagged fissure slowly making its way across the swirling blue expanse of the surrounding Void. Bit by bit, the fabric of reality began to fray, to tear, to split – from the outside. Something out there had found a weak point in the dimensional wall, and was slowly carving a path into Bill's kingdom, ripping and shredding and gutting anything in its path, including what little stability remained in this tortured realm of existence.

Whatever was out there, the Axolotl could already sense its presence, actually _feel_ its ravenous hatred and poisonous obsession, feel its demented need to control and dominate and perfect and calcify _everything_ radiating from it. This was exactly what he'd been worrying about ever since local reality became flexible to allow uninvited guests… except this time, it wasn't just a few sneaky dimensional parasites jumping ship or a mid-level cosmic nightmare like the Filth seeping through the cracks in the world; this was a full-blown Lovecraftian Horror punching its way through reality, and there didn't seem to be any way of stopping it.

So far, the only plus to the situation that he could see was that, as far as he could tell, Bill was just as shocked as he was: the scarlet hue had bled away, leaving him his familiar shade of gold; the maelstrom of energies surrounding him had vanished; his eye was wide with astonishment and fear, and unless Axolotl was deeply mistaken, he was already starting to back away from the growing split in reality.

At long last, the fissure was ripped open into a massive hole in the dimensional wall, chunks of stellar matter flaking away as it did so. And in the gaping abyss it revealed, there was only unending darkness, without form and without matter, the purest and most terrifying form of the space between dimensions. And then, _something_ loomed out of the nothingness.

Her eight titanic limbs spanned the length and breadth of the entire star system, vast chitinous spires of eldritch matter that could have impaled a planet.

Her eyes blazed in the void with an intensity that outshone stars and shrivelled black holes, her gaze at once conveying purest dispassion and soul-rending hatred, at once divine wisdom and ravening madness.

Her segmented body, a vast, perfectly-symmetrical construction of infinite logic, cast a shadow so deep that even Bill could not escape it; her glistening black carapace almost perfectly mirrored the world around her, and the gravity of her being almost wrenched the surviving planets out of their orbits.

"Giant spider" didn't do this creature justice: she was structure and logic and stasis made flesh. She was eternal order, as inescapable as a singularity and as inevitable as death.

She could only be an avatar of…

"Oh _shit_ ," Axolotl groaned.

There was a pause, and then the being spoke: she produced no sound, nor was any telepathic voice heard in the minds of the onlookers. The words simply _existed_ , had always existed and had always been spoken even without a voice to produce them, embossed upon the very substance of the world.

AT LAST, I AM HERE, she said. AND I FIND NOT ONLY ONE OF ANANASA'S DEGENERATE CREATIONS, BUT THE SOURCE OF THIS WORLD'S CORRUPTION. HOW VERY APPROPRIATE.

"What… what _are_ you?" Bill whispered.

I AM ORDER. I AM LOGIC. I AM PATTERN AND STRUCTURE, DIRECTION AND REASON. I AM CLARITY, AND I AM STASIS AND I AM CALCIFICATION. I AM THE GUIDING HAND OF REALITY. I AM UNIVERSAL PERFECTION.

I AM THE WEAVER.

"… who?"

YOUR IGNORANCE WILL NOT BE INDULGED, said the Weaver. YOU ARE CHAOS. YOU ARE DISRUPTION. YOU ARE DISGUSTING. YOU ARE A BLIGHT ON WORLDS THAT HAVE YET TO HEAR MY ONESONG. YOU ARE AN INSULT TO ORDER, A DESTROYER OF POTENTIAL PERFECTION. YOU ARE AN ERROR IN REALITY… AN ERROR WHICH I AM COMPELLED TO CORRECT.

And then, from behind the Weaver's avatar, something _else_ began crawling from the gap in reality, a glistening white tide pouring out across the cosmos. Most of them were too small to be seen against the stellar backdrop, but as Axolotl focussed his eldritch senses upon them, the newest arrival became apparent: they were spiders, billions upon billions of ghastly white spider-spirits flowing like water through the ruined star system, most of them no bigger than four inches long.

But wherever they went, they instantaneously spun lengths of crystalline silk, layering local space in a network of glittering threads, a web of impossible beauty. And whatever the web touched… changed.

Slowly the swirling blue vortex of Weirdness that had overwhelmed the Southern Void began to fade, the colour bleeding away until all that was left was the eternal night of deep space. Bit by bit, the azure waves were pushed back across the system, every illogical phenomena in the system vanishing as the crystalline threads touched them; the sun rippled back into shape; planets reformed from shattered asteroids, continents and oceans appearing where once there'd only been molten rock. Every strand of the web the spiders wove erased Weirdness from local reality, slowly restoring the world around it to its natural form.

 _Pattern-Spiders,_ Axolotl realized, _weaving the Pattern Web._

"What are you doing?!" Bill shrieked. "What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?! You're ruining all my best work!"

I IMPOSE ORDER ON CHAOS. MY CREATIONS RESTORE FUNCTION. MY CHILDREN CLEANSE IMPERFECTION. I AM SAVING THIS WORLD, ONE STAR SYSTEM AT A TIME. I WILL MAKE THIS REALITY PERFECT.

"The _**HELL**_ you will! I don't know where you came from and I don't know what brought you here, but you're not going to turn this world back to the way it used to be! I worked long and hard bringing Weirdness into this two-bit dimension, and I haven't gone this far just to see it ruined by some… big spider queen… _thing!"_

EMPTY BRAVADO WILL NOT AVAIL YOU. YOU WILL BE CORRECTED. YOU WILL BE ERASED.

" **SHUT UP AND** _ **DIE!"**_

And with that, Bill pointed a finger at the nearest rank of Pattern Spiders and sent a deadly bolt of searing blue energy rocketing towards them; in the blinding flash of light that followed, over half a million of the tiny spiders were instantly disintegrated, and over a million more were scorched beyond repair by the thermal blast accompanying it… but a billion more were already crawling through the portal to replace them. Letting out a snarl of rage, Bill fired again, this time sending a wave of coruscating energy across the enemy flank, into the bulk of the new Pattern Web: billions fell, and over a hundred thousand miles of crystal threads snapped and frayed under the onslaught… but the reinforcements were already pouring in, repairing the Web as they went.

Bellowing in rage, Bill gathered another blast, a veritable hurricane of eldritch energies that could have seared a planet barren, and flung it at the Weaver. It scored a direct hit on her thorax, the life-extinguishing fires blazing out across her exoskeleton… but when the flames finally cleared, the Weaver stood unharmed.

PERFECTION CANNOT BE STOPPED, she said. Was it Axolotl's imagination, or did she sound ever-so-slightly smug?

SUBMIT TO ORDER. SURRENDER YOURSELF TO THE PURGATION.

" **SHUT UP, SHUT UP,** _ **SHUT UP!"**_ Bill thundered, apoplectic with rage.

THE VOICE OF ORDER CANNOT BE SILENCED.

" **THIS IS SOME NEW TRICK OF THE AXOLOTL'S ISN'T IT? HE BROUGHT YOU HERE TO STOP ME, RIGHT?! WELL IT'S NOT GONNA WORK! HE COULDN'T STOP ME! TIME BABY COULDN'T STOP ME! AND NEITHER WILL YOU!"**

YOU ARE A CHILD. YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING. I WILL MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND. I WILL MAKE YOU HEAR THE ONESONG BEFORE YOU DIE.

The Weaver took a step forward across the cosmos, and as she did so, her body glowed with its own infra-violet shade of improbable energies, erupting forth in a creeping barrage of perfectly-straight lines and geometrically-perfect shapes, each one tracing a path towards Bill. They made contact with a coruscating series of flashes, blistering his flesh and tearing open at least a dozen brutal-looking wounds across his corporeal form.

Roaring in agony, Bill regenerated his flesh and returned fire: with a wave of his hand, he tore the Southern Void's sun from its orbit and flung it at the Weaver, taking every planet in the system with it. The Weaver soaked up every single impact without even flinching, and retaliated with a supernova that all but scorched the flesh from Bill's body. With another shriek of pain, Bill recovered, allowing new flesh to pour back across his weeping muscles. Then, he flung himself at the distant figure of the Weaver with all the tact of a guided missile. "HENCHMANIACS!" he hollered. "TO **WAR!"**

And then, a familiar voice right next to Axolotl's left ear muttered "Why exactly are you not running?"

It took every last atom of willpower left in the Axolotl's borrowed body to not jump in shock. As expected, Nyarlathotep was standing beside him, a triumphant smirk on his face. "I'd have thought you'd have known when to make an exit," he said smugly. "Don't tell me I have to help you with _that_ as well."

For a moment, Axolotl could only stare, Tyler Cutebiker's already wide-eyed face boggling incredulously at the Outer God. "W…was this _your_ doing?" he demanded at last. "Did you summon… _her?"_

"You said you wanted a distraction."

"A _proportionate_ distraction!" Axolotl exploded. "Something that would have gotten his attention without endangering local reality! You could have detonated a bomb, you could have stolen the Fearamid and taken it on a joyride! Youcould gone unicycling naked through the cosmos with your ass painted in the colours of the Belarusian flag and a vuvuzela jammed halfway down your throat! Summoning the Weaver is _not_ even remotely a proportionate response, Nyarlathotep! _What is_ _ **wrong**_ _with you?!_ "

"Nothing. Bill, on the other hand, appears to have lost his hat."

"SHUT UP AND TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!"

"Oh, I am. _I am._ I also recall you remarking that we might have to make some rather an unorthodox allies if we wanted to stop Bill."

" _Not the Weaver!_ Okay, I suggested making use of _a_ Weaver, but I was talking about the Bas-Lag variant, _not the fucking World of Darkness variant!_ Nyarlathotep, do you have any idea what she'll do if she actually succeeds in killing him? What she'll do to the people? About forty percent of the remaining human population will probably be executed, and the rest will be calcified into her clockwork toys! And that's assuming she and Bill don't end up ripping this dimension apart!"

"Oh ye of little faith," Nyarlathotep chortled. "Bill's got a trump card up his sleeve, just waiting to be used: he'll have it in play once the Weaver's gotten him too spooked to concentrate on his pride."

Once again, Axolotl could only stare incredulously. "You were planning on _all_ of this? How could you have possibly have guaranteed-"

"Axolotl?"

"Yes?"

"If you want to continue relying on my services, I suggest you don't question my methods. Now, I think it's time you made good on your escape: you keep on leading Bill a merry chase, and I'll keep on gathering the members of the zodiac. You just leave everything to me…"

"But-"

"Now, please."

Axolotl took a deep breath as he struggled to regain control of the conversation. "No," he said at last. "You-"

And then he felt the familiar pulse of the same terrible power that had left him on the brink of death. This time, though, he was ready for it – not quite ready enough to soak up the worst of the effects, but at least ready enough to prevent himself from haemorrhaging from every single orifice of his host body. Then again, he probably needn't have even bothered: it wasn't anywhere near as strong, but in his experience, direct alterations to established timelines were _always_ painful especially when he was unlucky enough to be standing inside them.

"Goddammit, not again," he grumbled, as he pitched forward. Nyarlathotep caught him at the last minute, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him upright."

"Don't lose consciousness, now. You've got an escape to make good on."

"Bill's… doing something to time…"

"Exactly. Now, we don't want to get caught up in it, do we? Come along now…"

The last thing Axolotl saw, before Nyarlathotep stepped sideway across the galaxy, was Bill – crimson with rage and incandescent with power – seizing the very flow of time itself, and drawing it backwards…

… _turning back time._

* * *

YOU CANNOT DO THIS FOREVER.

"Wanna bet?" Bill snarled.

His hands now blazed with neon-blue flames, pouring his infinite power into the chronoreacive particles of time itself: he'd done this before, back when he'd been content with party games, when the most spectacular thing he'd ever done had been to tie old Pine Tree's timeline in knots and link it up with the Shapeshifter's own lifespan. Now, though, there were more vital things to accomplish with his command of time. None of his other powers had any effect on the Weaver: this, as strenuous and brain-muddling as it was to use, was his only way of driving off the invader.

Bit by bit, he exerted more force upon the flow of time, pushing it back and back and back until he could see the strands of the web across the Southern Void beginning to unravel, until he could see the little spiders being swept back into the gaping crater from which they spilled. He could feel the Weaver trying to resist, could actually sense the crushing force of her own will hammering down on his own, but for all her power, she didn't have control of time in this world; she didn't have a handle on Bill's trump card. And in the end, not even she could resist being pushed backwards toward the fissure in reality.

THE FACT THAT YOU COULD NOT DESTROY ME IS PROOF OF YOUR WEAKNESS, the Weaver sneered contemptuously as she slid away.

" _Shut… up…"_

YOU ARE AN INFANT PLAYING WITH TOYS YOU CAN BARELY COMPREHEND. YOU WILL DESTROY YOURSELF LONG BEFORE YOU CAN EVER DREAM OF DESTROYING _ME._

For once, Bill had nothing to say. His usual wellspring of malicious humour and toxic trash talk had finally run dry under the continued stress of the moment. Now, all he cared about was getting this monster out of his world.

Around him, the star system warped and twisted in and out of shape: planets reformed from pulverized dust and took their place back at the centre of the system, only to explode back into asteroids; the sun bobbed and flowed in and out of place, erupting into its red giant phase once again; and as the web was slowly unwoven, the vortex pulsed back into existence, the familiar flow of local Weirdness reasserting itself across the star system – until at last, the web was gone and the last of the spiders had returned to the fissure.

Finally, the Weaver herself was pushed to the very edge of the crater in reality, struggling against the flow of time with all her might, but even she – with all her power, with all her impossible influence over reality – could not resist _time._ Bit by bit, she slid past the rim of the crater, until at last she began the long, slow plunge back into the nothingness from which she'd crept.

I WILL FIND ANOTHER WAY IN, she said. WE WILL MEET AGAIN.

Then the fissure closed, and she was gone.

Bill did his best to reinforce the dimensional wall behind her, but he knew there honestly wasn't much point other than assuaging his own fears: the Weaver, from what little he'd seen of her, obviously wasn't stupid. She'd only stumbled upon him here by accident, and next time she'd pick a more isolated beachhead – someplace where he wouldn't arrive in time to stop her spinning that maddening, reality-restoring web. Next time, she might aim for the Rift in the skies above Gravity Falls, at the very source of the Weirdness that had liberated this dimension. What if she were to spin a web over _that?_

He shuddered, trying not to imagine those terrible crystal threads imprisoning his powers.

But where had the Axolotl found the Weaver in the first place? What business would a committed member of the goody-two-shoes brigade with something as rigid and oppressive as the thing that had crept into his world scant moments ago? All this talk of calcification and order and harbingers of ascension just wasn't Axolotl's scene. Even if the giant newt happened to meet the Weaver by accident, all the "I will make this world perfect" would probably have repelled him on the spot.

There was a polite cough from somewhere below. It was 8-Ball, looking even more befuddled than usual. "Uh, boss, what do we do now?"

This threw Bill for a moment: in all the confusion, he'd completely forgotten what the hell they'd been doing in the Southern Void to begin with. Wracking his brain for answers, he at last remembered the energy signature he'd followed into the star system, and with an unpleasant jolt to all the extraneous organs he'd added to his corporeal form so long ago (as a party trick), he realized that he'd been distracted from locating the Axolotl's hiding place.

Frantically, he scanned the area with all his otherworldly sensory apparatus, searching desperately for some sign of the presence that been hovering just out of sight just a few minutes ago. But in the end, he found nothing.

The Axolotl had escaped.

Bill _howled_ in rage. He roared and thundered and tore at creation with every weapon at his disposal: he grew to a billion times his normal size and crushed the local sun between his fingertips; his body rippled into three dimensions and multiplied into a column of two dozen interconnected pyramids, each one bright crimson with fury; his arms snaked out in their trillions and lashed at reality, carving huge unsightly divots where there'd once been populated worlds. Gravity was reversed, enforced, deactivated, flipping objects upside down, crushing them to powder and sending them floating away; temperatures inverted, causing neighbouring stars to freeze solid; electromagnetic waves became rubber, coronal rain turned to custard, and the inhabitants of an entire populated system a few light-years away were instantly transformed into disused tax forms.

In the end, he turned his rage on the surrounding Henchmaniacs.

"YOU LOST HIM, _YOU USELESS_ _ **FUCKING DOLTS!"**_ he bellowed, flinging them from one end of the system to the other. "I TOLD YOU I WANTED HIM FOUND AND YOU LET HIM SLIP AWAY!"

"But boss, you said you wanted the Weaver stopped-"

" **SHUT UP WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU, KEYHOLE, OR I'LL TURN YOU INSIDE-OUT AND USE YOU AS A PAIR OF GLOVES!"**

"But why couldn't you just use the time power to bring him back here?"

" **ONE MORE WORD OUT OF YOU AND I'LL GRIND YOU DOWN FOR PYRONICA'S BEAUTY PRODUCTS! SHE'LL BE WEARING YOU** _ **ALL OVER HER,**_ **YOU LITTLE PISSANT! YOU UNDERSTAND THAT, TEEETH?!"**

Bill paused for breath, and gradually reassumed his natural form.

"Okay," he sighed. "Okay. I'm calm. I'm in control again, and I am perfectly…" His eye twitched dangerously. "… _perfectly_ fine. Where was I"

"I was asking why you couldn't just rewind time agai-"

"He's _resisting_ my time powers," Bill hissed tersely. "I can't focus on him, I can't pin him down, and I can't get a good enough look at him to zero in. I don't even know form he's taken in this dimension."

"Oh."

"Now, here's what I want you to do, 8-Ball. I want you and the others to find the Axolotl as quickly as possible: I don't know what he's planning, but I want you back on his trail, _pronto._ Now, I don't know why he hasn't attacked any of us yet, but I can make a few well-informed guesses – maybe he's trying not to endanger the lives of anyone in this hick universe or some such sweet-natured bullshit, or maybe he's saving his strength. I don't know and I don't care: point is, you can take him. Get the picture?"

"That's just the thing, boss…" said 8-Ball nervously.

Bill paused, took a deep and extremely pointless breath, and continued. "You _can_ find his trail again, right?"

"Yes, but that's not the problem," Kryptos chimed in. "He can sense us long before we can see him. He can sense we don't belong in this universe, and he always runs off before we can corner him."

"You didn't have any trouble cornering him _this_ time."

"Only by accident, boss; if that stellar storm hadn't slowed him down, we'd never have caught up with him."

"Oh for the love of all that's putrid! What do you people want me to do?" Bill thundered. "Find him myself?!"

Several pairs of eyes and several eyeless faces looked up at him expectantly.

"No! Not even remotely! Even if I took some other form, he'd still recognize that I wasn't part of this… w…"

He paused.

 _Some other form…_

"Jackpot," he whispered.

The Henchmaniacs stared blankly up at him.

"We need someone stealthy enough to sneak up on the Axolotl. We need someone native to this dimension, someone he won't be able to detect… someone who might be able to sniff him out with just a little help and modification..." Bill's eye twisted into a monstrous smirk. "The Axolotl wants to make this a hunt to remember? Fine. We've got the perfect hunting hound."

"Boss?"

"Amorphous Shape! Go back to Gravity Falls, find that old bunker of Sixer's, and get that cryotube thawed out: I think it's time our frosty little Pine Tree saw the light of day again..."

* * *

Somewhere just outside Bill Cipher's dimensional kingdom, the Weaver's corporeal avatar sat and brooded over her amassed forces – her Pattern Spiders, her Drones, her elevated Perfect Ones, her elements and her mightiest spirits – and calculated the next course of action.

 _This is not acceptable_ , she told them, her voice rippling out across the minds of her children, all of them listening in rapt attention to the Onesong as it played out across their interconnected brains. _We must find another way into his dominion._

 _As you command, so shall it be done,_ the army replied.

 _What of the Ananasi we captured,_ a few outlying minds whispered. _What of Darlene?_ _What is to be done with her, Mistress?_

 _She is to be re-educated… then Clarified. Perfection cannot be refused._

"Is this a private conversation, or can anyone join in?"

All heads turned in the general direction of the voice, millions upon millions of eyes focussing on the lone figure striding towards them. It was immediately apparent that despite its anthropoid appearing, this being was not human: the dimensions were too dissimilar, the energy readouts too vivid to belong to any of the Weaver's favourite breed. This was evidently the avatar of some powerful spirit, but what? An Incarnae? A Celestine? What power could this corporeal entity represent?

WHO ARE YOU? The Weaver demanded, now embossing her words upon reality.

"The name's Nyarlathotep," said the man, his smile casting an unearthly glow upon the surrounding watchers in the darkness of interdimensional space. "And I'm here with a proposition you might find very interesting."

WE ARE THE FORCES OF PERFECTION. WE DO NOT MAKE BARGAINS WITH THE POWERS OF WORLDS MY ONESONG HAS NOT TOUCHED.

"Nonetheless, I think you should listen for a while. It really is in your best interest."

AND WHY IS THAT?

"Because I honestly think you're aiming too low in life."

WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF MY AIMS?

"I know you were one of a Triat of ruling entities dedicated to the proper management of reality in your neck of the woods: the Wyld created matter, you refined it into recognizable forms and imposed rules upon it, and the Wyrm destroyed old and redundant matter so it could be recycled. Except you eventually had other ideas. You decided to take control of the process, to impose your order on a chaotic system, to make it perfect and ensure that it never changed. And I can tell from the fact that you're even here - _and_ more powerful than most iterations of yourself - that you're from a dimension in which you triumphed over all: the Wyld and the Weaver are smothered in the Pattern Web, the Werewolves and Fera have been driven into extinction, Queen Ananasa has abandoned all hope, and humanity has been sculpted into your favourite creation in a world where everything is perfect and everything has been calcified into stasis.

Nyarlathotep smiled, barely stifling a giddy laugh. "And now that you've found a portal connecting your world to this one, you want a repeat performance: another perfect world of your own, am I right?"

YOU ARE CORRECT, said the Weaver, barely managing to hide her surprise.

"And what if I were to tell you that this world is so much more than just another prize to be perfected and calcified? See, Bill's invasion has made the walls of this dimension extremely... porous. You're not the only one to have made the journey here, honey, and you certainly won't be the last: every godling and abomination with a taste for fresh thrills has been flocking to this world to partake in the festivities of Bill Cipher's ultimate playground. But the portals aren't one-way, my dear: this world is now a veritable nexus of gateways – an interdimensional crossroads by which any world imaginable can be accessed."

There was a long pause, as the Weaver scrutinized every facet of Nyarlathotep's being, trying to discern any patterns associated with untruth.

YOU ARE NOT LYING, she said at last.

"Why does everyone always sound so surprised when they say that?"

GET TO THE POINT. WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE?

"That you halt your plans to invade this world again… for now. I have my own plans for this dimension, and they can ill afford further disruption. All I need you to do is remain beyond the barrier separating Bill's kingdom from interdimensional space, and keep the Weirdness from spilling out."

YOU WANT ME TO ABANDON MY SACRED MISSION FOR THIS REALITY. AND WHAT DO I GET IN RETURN FOR INDULGING YOUR SELFISH WHIMS? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE WORTH AGREEING TO YOUR BARGAIN, INSECT?

"Everything," said Nyarlathotep with a wink. "Quite literally."

There was a pause, as the Weaver digested this.

YOU PROPOSE TO GIVE ME ACCESS TO THE OTHER WORLDS OF THE CROSSROADS?

"It's the only way you'll be able to do so; your search for perfection will ruin everything otherwise. The portals connecting these worlds together have been brought on entirely by Bill Cipher's Weirdness: get rid of that, get rid of Bill and you get rid of the portals. Sure, you'll have one more world to add to your little empire of stasis, but you'll lose out on an infinite multitude of others. But if you consent to my terms, I can provide you with the locations of these portals and precise charts of where they lead. With my help, your conquest of the multiverse will be instantaneous and unchallenged, and neither human or Changeling Breed will be able to stand in your way."

YOU SAY YOU HAD PLANS FOR THIS DIMENSION.

"Let's just say that a crossroads… would be very useful for my purposes. Just how useful it'll be depends on just how well the next few weeks work in my favour. Right now, I've joined forces with the Axolotl – you may recall seeing him hiding under your entry portal. Long story short, we're putting together a team to depose Bill once and for all. Once he's gone, we can begin plans for your expansion across infinity."

AND WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU FAIL? WHAT HAPPENS IF BILL CIPHER IS ABLE TO DESTROY YOU AND THIS AXOLOTL?

Nyarlathotep shrugged. "Then you get to keep this dimension as a consolation prize. You've proved yourself more than equal to the task of ending Bill's reign if the worst comes to worst."

THEN I ACCEPT YOUR… BARGAIN, SUCH AS IT IS. I SHALL REMAIN OUTSIDE THIS DIMENSION, AND I SHALL PREVENT ANY WEIRDNESS FROM ESCAPING, AS YOU INSTRUCTED. IN TIME, YOU WILL SATISFY YOUR END OF THE BARGAIN. SHOULD YOU CEASE TO EXIST, I WILL CLAIM THIS REALM AS MY OWN, AND ALL WITHIN WILL KNOW THE JOY OF LIFE WITHOUT THE CURSE OF INDIVIDUALITY.

"Good, good. I knew you'd see reason. Oh, one more thing: I may need some of your Drones in the next few days – the more powerful ones, for choice. Just a little something to make life a little harder for Bill, among other worthwhile targets."

The Weaver considered this. YOU WANT SOME OF MY PERFECT ONES, she said.

"In time, yes."

THEN PERHAPS YOU WOULD DO ME THE FAVOUR OF ACQUIRING SUITABLE HUMANS THAT I CAN MAKE INTO DRONES… FROM AMONG BILL'S PERSONAL STOCK OF SLAVES. LOOK FOR OBEDIENT PERFECTIONISTS, THOSE INCLINED TO CONFORM AND SEEK ORDER ABOVE ALL ELSE. FROM THEIR DESIRE FOR ORDER SHALL A NEW ARMY OF PERFECT ONES BE BORN.

"An abduction plan for future minions? I like the way you think, my dear. As a matter of fact, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship of convenience…"

* * *

A/N: Anyone care to guess who Nyarlathotep might want to offer up as a sacrifice? Who could fit the bill for the Weaver's favourite type of person?

Up next - a group of wanderers make a horrific discovery, and a new threshold of power is discovered... or, to put it another way:

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	26. Inside Pandora's Box

A/N: *sigh* I meant for this to be a short chapter, ladies and gents, I really did.

No, really. Stop laughing. In any event, I couldn't chainsaw this one, so I just had to let it keep going until the point was made.

One way or the other, I extend my unending thanks to all of you who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed! Special thanks to guest, MrNonsense, Frosty Wolf, your biggest fan, OMAC001, Carcer14, Northgalus2002, Hourglass Cipher, Blind-Eyephone, Fantasy Fan 223, and Crowned Steven!

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: feel free to correct those dreadful typos that creep in at three in the morning! Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls still ain't mine. Also, this chapter may diverge from the backstory as portrayed by Journal 3, due to Bill Cipher's interference with the timeline (and definitely not due to me losing access to the only copy of Journal 3 I could borrow, no sir).

 **Update: Tweaking the chapter ever-so-slightly to keep it a bit more in line with Journal 3 now that I _finally_ have a copy. Still a few divergences, but once again, time-travel applies.**

* * *

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* * *

Gravity Falls had seen better days.

By now, Weirdness had quite clearly had its way with the place: the streets were empty, blasted things, frequented only by spider-legged armchairs, screaming shards of mirror and human-shaped rat plagues. The lawns flowed and ebbed like water, perfectly solid yet washing back and forth. The roads were rivers of ethereal mist, flowing with the souls of dead playthings en route to resurrection in another playground. The sky above the ruins was an ocean of steaming, coppery blood, alive with giggling, lamprey-mouthed sea monsters. The barren forest gleamed stark white under the glare of the infernal sun, the trees transformed into towering human skeletons. Buildings oozed skywards in viscous rivulets, wood, brick and concrete fused together into one syrupy mass – in which the whimpering figures of human beings could still be seen, trapped forever in the walls of their homes. No refugees dared walk these maddening streets, unless they had no other choice.

After all, nothing could shelter them here. Nothing was left of the old Gravity Falls… with one exception.

Deep beneath the skeletal forest, a dilapidated bunker lurked. Deep within, past the shelves of unused provisions, past the booby traps, past the control room and through the corroding remains of the decontamination chamber, the hidden laboratory stood in echoing silence. In spite of all the upheaval that had been inflicted on the surrounding area, one cryotube was still intact and running, still casting an unearthly blue glow upon the surrounding caverns.

And behind the lone tube's glass, the Shapeshifter remained trapped in cryogenic sleep, frozen in his familiar pose of mimicked terror. Ironically, he was the only one of Gravity Falls' current residents who hadn't been changed in some way by the riding tides of Weirdness that had consumed the town. It wasn't easy for anyone to sleep through the apocalypse, but through Ford Pines' machines and Bill Cipher's edict, the Shapeshifter had managed it.

However, the chamber hadn't _quite_ had the intended effect on the prisoner: though the ice was more than enough to keep his body incarcerated, it wasn't enough to completely shut down his brain; despite being completely frozen, the Shapeshifter's mind was still active, still howling silently in rage at the monotony of it all.

Ultimately, it didn't mean much in the long run, given that he couldn't move or take a form that might undo the freezing. But he could still think, however dimly. He was aware of the world around him, of the glass walls caging him in on all sides, of the merciless cold that paralysed him. He could plan, he could scheme, he could fantasize his revenge… and most importantly of all, he could escape his prison the only way still possible for him.

He could dream of the past.

* * *

 _There is warmth here. It has been warm and safe here for as long as he can remember, though he cannot say how much time has passed since he first began to think._

 _Nor does he know who he is or even_ what _he is: he simply_ is _._

 _And for the first time since he first awoke here in the dark, there is a new sensation: movement. Someone is carrying him – upwards. Up, out of the dark place where he was planted and into new territories, away from the nest. Moments later, there is a jolt as he is set down once more, and a strange series of noises can be heard echoing from somewhere far above him._

" _It's still intact… and_ alive? _Even after being buried so deep underground and left undisturbed for so long! What kind of species could possibly survive all that pressure and time, I wonder…"_

 _In this moment, he is struck by the realization that he should be leaving soon, an impulse telling him he should not be in this warm but confining space a moment longer. Acting on instinct, he lunges forward as far as he can go, thrusting out his jaws at the nearest wall as hard as he can possibly can; with a muffled_ crunch _, he feels the wall ahead of him crumple, and then give way, revealing…_

 _Light, blinding in its intensity. With it comes a harsh gust of ice-cold air, cutting through the reassuring warmth that had shrouded him up until this very moment. Shivering and exhausted, he crawls from the remains of the egg and out into the world for the first time._

 _Eyes struggling to adjust to the onslaught of light and unfamiliar atmospheric conditions, he looks curiously at the surrounding environment, trying to recognize the various items strewn around him. His instincts tell him that it's important to study these objects and commit them to memory, but he isn't sure why._

 _Then, he sees the gigantic figure standing over him; for a split-second, he takes in the bizarre shape of the body, the inexplicably layered appearance of the skin, the alien layout of the face, the weird-dimensioned eyes hidden behind flat, glassy carapace. Then, deeper impulses kick in:_

 _Stranger = potential threat._

 _Flight/fight response: threat + overwhelming size_ _own exhaustion = run._

 _Exhaustion x unknown environment = no possibility of running._

 _Then he sees the strange cylindrical shape next to him. He takes in its shiny white surface, its ceramic composition, its distinctive pattern of hairline cracks, and the strange curving shape emerging from it. What happens next happens entirely on reflex: an ethereal aperture within his being opens, muscles warp and shift, glands drip diligently, and a moment later, he_ changes.

 _He gathers himself into a new shape, rolling his body into a perfect cylinder; then he sprouts a curving shape of his own from his back, even as he converts his flesh into a glossy shell of white ceramic and hides his eyes and mouth behind it._ _A moment later, there are_ two _strange ceramic cylindrical shapes sitting on the ground._

 _At last, his instincts have rewarded him, for now knows who and what he is: he is a Shapeshifter. He is perfectly disguised. But if he is hidden, why does the threat appear so interested?_

 _And why does this glass-eyed creature seem so… familiar?_

* * *

 _The Shapeshifter's disguise does little to help him in the end: the threat simply picks him up and carries him away, leaving him quivering helplessly in his captor's hands. He knows he must fight, or at least find some form that can break free of the threat's grasp, but he is still too exhausted from his hatching and taking on his first form to put much effort into it. At the apex of his terror, he briefly attempt to take on the shape of the threat itself, but the Shapeshifter's muscles scream in protest at the effort of adopting such a large mass, and he knows at once that he isn't strong enough for it yet._

 _And there is something about his captor, something that seems to shut down the Shapeshifter's desire to escape, something that tells him that this strange glassy-eyed being is not a threat at all. He doesn't know what this feeling could be, but it seems to come from the same place in his brain that the earlier sense of_ recognition _had come from. And though it makes no sense to him whatsoever, he finds himself going limp in his captor's hands, allowing it to carry him away._

 _As the hours tick by, the Shapeshifter can only stare at the world around him, marvelling at the sheer variety of shapes sitting just beyond his reach, and finds himself almost exploding with the need to study and assume them all. He wants to change, he wants to shift, he wants to be different, but his desire to see more – combined with the inexplicable resistance inside his head – forces him to remain still, even as his stamina slowly returns._

 _In the end, he can only watch in fascination as his newfound keeper walks into what appears to be a cave, travels through a series of passageways, and finally comes to a stop in a strange white-surfaced enclosure, where it finally sets the container down._

 _For several seconds, the Shapeshifter can only sit there, still in his cylindrical form, wondering what to do next. Then, after almost a minute of twiddling with strange metal things and tapping his outer shell with glass-tipped vines, the creature standing over him begins making sounds again._

" _Hello? Experiment 210, can you hear me? Can you understand me? Oh, of course it won't, idiot, it's just been_ born _… uh… you probably can't understand English… or anything else for that matter, but hopefully we'll be able to rectify that in time. Look, let's just start with a few basic care and feeding tests. I know this isn't making much sense, but just bear with me for a moment…"_

 _At this point, the glassy-eyed creature leaves. Left unattended, the Shapeshifter busies itself with exploring the platform around him. This surface is cluttered with objects for him to study and imitate: strange tubular formations of silica, inexplicable metal and polymer fusions, stark-white piles of wood-pulp sheets, and so much more. His senses allow him to read their composition with ease, his eyes intuiting all but the smallest details. So much of it is guided by instinct, he can barely begin to comprehend all the information he's receiving._

 _But for now, he doesn't need to understand. All he has to do is_ change.

 _A gland pulses, an aperture opens, and his body shifts into a new and extraordinary form. This time, however, he is careful to make sure that the shape he modelled himself on has been removed from the platform; the Shapeshifter has learned his lesson by now. Eventually, the creature with the glassy eyes returns, this time holding a large tray, and immediately begins making sounds again._

" _You know, 210, I can actually_ see _the microscope on the floor, in case you were wondering. You're not fooling anyone. Still, I brought you some food: I haven't detected any major differences in amino acids, digestion or nutritional requirements, so this should be safe for you. All we have to do is figure out what you prefer."_

 _It lifts the lid off the tray, and the Shapeshifter is immediately met with an aroma that sends his appetite into overdrive:_ meat _– raw and still-bloody! He hasn't eaten anything since he left his egg, and for the first time since then he is aware of just how hungry he is; it takes every last drop of willpower not to abandon his disguise and make a grab for the tray._

" _I found a wide selection for you: raw meat, cooked meat, insects, gastropods, vegetables… you've got teeth – well, your natural form has teeth – so I have to assume you're capable of chewing. I've cut the pieces small though, just to be on the safe side." The thing reaches into the tray, and holds out a shred of raw meat just above the Shapeshifter's disguised body. "Now, here we- WHOA!"_

 _Hunger briefly overwhelming him, the Shapeshifter shifts back into default form and lunges upwards, snatching the hunk of bloody meat out of the creature's hands with one almighty wrench of his jaws. Immediately, he descends on the meat, tearing it to pieces and swallowing the shredded lengths of flesh whole._

" _Wow, you really_ were _hungry. Well, at least I know what to get for you in future…"_

 _Then, the glassy-eyed being reaches out and gingerly touches the back of the Shapeshifter's head with an outstretched finger. Immediately, every instinct in the Shapeshifter's brain demands retaliation: this could be an attempt to capture him again, to harm him or even kill him. Now that he has some strength back, he must lash out and bite at those outstretched fingers, if only to stop his keeper from trying a second time._

 _But once again, something silences the desire before he can act on it. Instead, the Shapeshifter finds himself sitting there compliantly as his keeper gently strokes the back of his head._

 _And at last, he realizes what the inexplicable feeling is: safety. Comfort. Trust. And… familiarity._

 _This being, whatever it is, makes him feel safe. And for reasons that make no sense to him, he has the most peculiar notion that he's met this keeper of his before…_

* * *

 _He is given food. He is given water. He is given a bed, a strange cushioned thing contained in a walled-off enclosure. He is even given a strange inanimate_ thing _with a furry coat and glossy black eyes. Granted, he has no idea why the keeper seems to believe that he requires such a thing, but if nothing else, he has a third form to add to his growing repertoire. For a time, he is allowed to rest; he is not allowed to leave his enclosure, but as his inexplicable impulses continually remind him that he is safe, he has no desire for escape._

 _Eventually, he is given tasks, of a sort: mazes to run through, items to toy with, sights and sounds to memorize, reflective surfaces to study. Perhaps these are games, though his keeper doesn't seem the playful type. In any case, The Shapeshifter likes the reflection game the best: it's already glorious to feel his body change, but to_ see _the transformation for himself is a new and infinitely more complex layer of satisfaction._

 _These games prompt more noises from his keeper: "You're definitely intelligent, 210, maybe even sentient – all the more impressive considering you're only a week out of the egg. You're also understanding certain concepts a lot faster than expected. I wonder, is this some kind of genetic memory at work? A hive mind, maybe? And if it's the latter, are there more of you? Or maybe… just_ maybe … _do you have a name of your own?"_

 _There is a pause, as the Shapeshifter reviews the noises his keeper's been making for the last few seconds. He still can't understand most of it, but it sounds as though the last part was addressed to him. Curiously, he turns to look at it, studying the strange glassy-eyed being in detail._

" _My name is Stanford Pines."_

 _His keeper pauses, and then places a hand over its chest. "Stanford Pines," it intones, loudly and precisely. Then, it points at him, clearly waiting for a response of some kind. Then with a leap of recognition, the Shapeshifter understands: his keeper has just designated itself._

 _Stanford Pines._

 _However, the answer takes some time to formulate: he knows his own designation well enough, and he even has a rough idea of how it_ sounds, _if only because he's heard his keeper muttering it under his breath dozens of times when clearly referring to him – and another one of those inexplicable leaps of logic tells him this must be the case._

 _Unfortunately, the sound of the name is much more difficult to produce. Fortunately, over the last few days, he's learned how to change selectively. Bit by bit, he alters his throat until he can effectively sound out his designation._

" _ **ShAp**_ _EshIfTEr," he replies at last, gesturing to himself with a claw. The voice is guttural and distorted, but it's evidently just clear enough to be comprehended, for Stanford's eyes light up._

" _Well,_ that's _not a name, that's a species. I can't very well just call you Shapeshifter all the time, can I? It's too impersonal. I'm going to have to give you an actual name, okay? Something like… Proteus? No, no, too on the nose. Gwion? Hrmmm, I don't think so, I don't want to imagine who Ceridwen could be. Loki? Oh good god, no. We need a name without mythological references, something that might suffice as an alias until we can think up a better one."_

 _Stanford Pines hesitates for a moment, his features knitting as if in thought. Then, he places a hand on the back of the Shapeshifter's head, patting him the way he did a few days before._

" _Shifty," it says at last. "I'll call you Shifty. How's that sound?"_

 _The Shapeshifter considers this, realizing at once that he has been given a new designation – no, something more than that: a name. "ShIfTy," he replies, rolling the word around. Against all expectations, he likes it._

 _He is Shifty now._

 _But if that's the case, then why does his intuition tell him that he has_ another _name?_

* * *

 _Over the next few days, Stanford teaches him everything he can: human speech, human language, human customs, even a little human science and history. Shifty listens dutifully, storing away every single detail for future reference. Before long, he realizes that the same process that gave him his mental library of shapes comes in very handy during lessons such as these: his memory is all but perfect, no data mislaid, no information ever forgotten – for he_ must _memorize shapes if he is to properly assume them. So, he never forgets a lesson: once he hears it, it's internalized forever, making his keeper's makeshift exams_ very _easy to pass._

 _As soon as he has mastered the alphabet and the spoken word, Shifty moves swiftly through the lessons he is provided with. Even Stanford himself is a little startled at how quickly his student progresses. And yet, the longer he studies, Shifty finds himself once again struck by that curious sensation of familiarity, as if he's heard lessons like these before – as if he remembers the answers from somewhere_ else.

 _Before long, Stanford has to start explaining more personal details, if only to satisfy Shifty's growing curiosity about why he's been brought here. He tells him a little bit about himself, of his interest in anomalies and mysteries, of Gravity Falls and its surroundings, and even a little bit of his grand theory of Weirdness origin._

 _Not all the lessons are learned from Stanford, of course. Throughout all this time, Shifty's database of forms and shapes is growing: every day, he finds new shapes to claim as his own. Sometimes, he likes to change selectively, to combine forms and admire the resulting shapes in mirrors. Often, he changes simply for personal enjoyment, delighting in the shiver of anticipation he feels just before he shifts, exalting in the sensation of warping muscle and bone, riding the satisfaction he feels after every transformation like the crest of a wave._

 _He's growing stronger, as well: as time goes on, he finds that he can take larger and more complex forms, the apertures within his being slowly expanding to allow the transmission of additional mass, his mental library of shapes growing day by day. Again, Stanford can only marvel at the progress he makes, muttering excitedly to himself as he jots down his findings in the journal he now carries with him everywhere he goes, always keeping the_ pages just _out of Shifty's view._

 _There's something very interesting about that journal, something almost_ familiar _, but try as he might, Shifty can't say why…_

* * *

 _One day, there is a new arrival in Stanford's laboratory: a strange, slump-shouldered figure, long-nosed, long-faced and brown-haired; wide, furtive eyes look out at the world through glasses just like Stanford's, and an expression of deepest curiosity is written plainly on his face – mixed with a healthy dose of caution._

 _This is the first human being other than Stanford he's ever seen up-close, so Shifty finds himself slipping into the form of a coffee cup as the interloper steps into the laboratory, if only for the sake of observing this interloper before introducing himself._

" _Ford," the interloper asks eventually, "What's this in the cage?"_

" _Oh, that's Shifty?"_

" _Shifty?"_

" _Yes, Shifty. Well, I originally documented him as Experiment 210, but once I realized he was intelligent, I decided to call him Shifty. He seemed to like it, anyway. Isn't that right, Shifty?"_

"… _Ford, why are you talkin' to a coffee cup?"_

 _It takes all of Shifty's willpower to not laugh in that moment._

" _You can drop the disguise now," says Ford loudly._

" _Um, I don't want to cast any aspersions on your abilities, but are you_ sure _you're feelin' okay?"_

" _Just bear with me for a moment, Fiddleford. Ahem,_ the joke is **over** _, Shifty. Now would you please change back? You're being rude."_

" _Spoilsport," Shifty mutters, and reassumes his true form – prompting the stranger to let out a high-pitched yelp and almost leap backwards into Stanford's arms._

" _Aaargh! Holy-"_

" _It's okay!" Stanford interjects, placing a calming hand on the stranger's shoulder. "He's a friend. Fiddleford, this is Shifty – Experiment 210, as I used to call him. Shifty, this is Fiddleford McGucket, an old friend of mine; he's here to help me with my work."_

 _There is a pause, as Shifty considers the spindly-looking human. Once again, that sensation of Déjà vu is making itself felt, and once again, he's at a loss as to why: he doesn't know how he could have met this jittery little man, and he certainly has no explanation as to why his intuition tells him that this Fiddleford could be unpredictable – especially considering he looks about as dangerous as a glass of tepid water._

 _Still, he can't help but feel just a tiny bit suspicious: what work is this interloper helping with? What is Stanford doing_ apart _from cryptozoological studies? And why hasn't he shared it with Shifty?_

 _Eventually, Shifty extends a scrawny arm through the bars of the cage in the quivering human's direction._

 _"Pleased to meet you," he lies, as Fiddleford nervously shakes his claw._

* * *

" _How does he do that?"_

" _Do what?"_

" _Oh come on, Ford, you know what I'm talkin' about: how can Shifty transform? I mean, I've seen certain non-anomalous animals mimic other species, but this is something completely different: he actually_ becomes _the animal he's impersonatin'! And what about conservation of mass? I just saw him transform into a refrigerator, Ford: where did he get all the additional mass? He's been sproutin' quicker than grass in the summertime, but I know for a fact that he isn't_ that _big just yet. And what about the time he transformed into a coffee cup, or that hamster? Where did all his mass_ go? _I mean, there's just so much about him that doesn't make sense…"_

" _Hmm. Yep. Absolutely."_

" _Are you even listening to me?"_

" _Sorry?"_

" _You've been drawin' triangles on your hand again, Ford. You're always like this after you've been sleepwalking. I really wish you'd told me this morning, you know: I could have gotten you some of the old McGucket family pick-me-up."_

" _I'm_ fine, _Fiddleford, really. Oh, you were talking about Shifty's mass, weren't you? See, I'm focussed on the conversation!"_

" _Better late than never…"_

"Fiddleford!"

" _Alright, alright. So, were do you think our shapeshifter's been getting' all his additional mass from, and where do you think his mass has been going?"_

" _Well, I have a working hypothesis. You see, every time Shifty transforms, my instruments detect subtle pulses of energy: it's not enough to_ generate _new mass, but it's just enough to_ transport _it… and some of those energies showed up on the transdimensional spectrum."_

" _You're sure?"_

" _After all the work we've done on the portal so far, I'd be hard-pressed to mistake it for anything else. My theory is that his transformations are assisted by microscopic portals inside his body – portals leading to other dimensions, maybe even to a personalized pocket reality. When he wants to be bigger, he draws in mass from this dimension; when he wants to be smaller, he pumps some of his own mass away and reshapes what's left."_

" _Then why hasn't he been anything bigger than your couch?"_

" _My guess is, there's limits to how much mass he can use at a time: his limits improve with age, from what I can tell. I've done some tests, worked out a few calculations in some of the back pages of my journals, and there might be ways of artificially boosting his abilities, perhaps using transfusions of certain extradimensional energies to enhance the transmission of mass... but that'll have to wait for now."_

" _Let me guess, this ties into your theory of a dimension of weirdness?"_

" _It's always a possibility. I mean, I've never been able to find exactly where Shifty's egg_ really _came from, and even that crashed spaceship hasn't been able to illuminate much. For all I know, Shifty's parents are out there in the weirdness dimension. Maybe there's a whole culture of them somewhere out there."_

" _God almighty, I can barely cope with_ one."

" _Oh come on, Shifty's not that bad, surely?"_

" _You haven't seen what he gets up to when he's out of his cage, Ford. I swear, he gets sneakier every day…"_

 _And unknown to the two scientists, Shifty isn't in his cage anymore: he's watching them from a corner of the lab, listening to the conversation skid back and forth._

 _Always listening._

* * *

 _Weeks creep by in a haze of endless research, experimentation, writing, and (in Shifty's case) transformation. Every day, his powers grow and his true form matures: every day, he is a little taller, his arms a little longer, his senses more refined._

 _And the more Stanford writes in those mysterious journals of his, the more Shifty's curiosity grows. He can't help it: there's so many enticing things he's heard about it, so many secrets it supposedly contains._

 _Eventually, though, his interest takes on a sharper, more insistent note:_

 _As the days drag on, Shifty finds himself drawn time and again to the outside world, to the call of new shapes and new thrills. More than once, he asks – pleads, really – for Stanford to just let him out and so he can find some forms of his own, but the scientist insists that it's not safe for him out there. Every time Shifty asks, he's told that he's "still too young," or that he's too unique to risk on the outside world and needs to wait until they can find other shapeshifters, or some kind of environment where he can live safely and peacefully. And though he knows that Stanford means well, the sense of confinement rankles like the dying nerve-ending in a rotten tooth._

 _With his instincts still crying out for new shapes to study and assume, Shifty is forced to look for them elsewhere; he begins obsessively studying as many books on zoology as Stanford will permit, filling his internal library of shapes with what he can glean from the text and images within. It's no substitute for being outside and seeing these forms up close, but it's better than nothing._

 _And the journals are the ultimate conclusion of this humble goal._

 _There's so many forms in those pages that he longs to assume, so many shapes beyond his reach… and there's also Stanford's deeper experiments, on enhancing shapeshifting, on building the portal, and on this mysterious benefactor he hears Stanford occasionally muttering about. So much more could be attained if he could just study a little of this research._

 _If Stanford would just_ let him read…

 _But no. His keeper has secrets._

 _Stanford's personality is beginning to subtly change: he's less trusting than usual, less inclined to share and all but consumed by his work on the portal; he's become prone to insomnia, bouts of sleep-walking, eye complaints and inexplicable giggling fits. Once or twice, Shifty swears that he actually sees his keeper's eyes_ change colour _. And the longer this continues, Stanford only grows more stubborn when the matter of his journal discussed, and insists on keeping his "pet" in a cage as the portal experiments grow more dangerous, claiming it to be "for your own safety."_

 _And every day he cannot read the journal, Shifty fears that an opportunity is slipping away from him. What if something_ happens _to the journal? So much precious knowledge will be lost forever, so many shapes will be denied him; Stanford travelled far and risked so much just to study these creature – Shifty might never find them on his own._

 _And every time the thought crosses his mind, Shifty can't help but feel that the worst has already come to pass, and the journal has already been burned…_

* * *

 _Shifty doesn't know how much time has elapsed – weeks, perhaps, maybe months – but it doesn't matter. He's lost track by now. All that matters is this:_

 _His patience has officially snapped._

 _He can't stand another minute spent without the journal and all its secrets; he can't stand being indoors a moment longer, cooped up in the increasingly-confining laboratory as he has been for the last few weeks, and the cage only rankles further. He wants to be free, he wants to find new shapes, he wants to know all the secrets the journal hides and he wants to do it before something awful happens… and the fact that he doesn't know where he's getting these inexplicable bursts of intuition only frustrates him further._

 _But right now, Shifty doesn't have much left in the way of options._

 _He can't talk Stanford into letting him read the journal. He can't steal the journal either: Stanford's journals are too-well secured. And he can't try to brute-force the journal away from him either. As much it frustrates him to admit, hurting the eccentric scientist is the last thing on his mind: the same sense of intuition that first told him that his keeper could be trusted now informs him, louder than ever, that Stanford Pines must not be harmed._

 _No, if he wants to get his hands on the journal, he must play to his strengths. And one thing he excels at above all else is_ subterfuge.

 _Once he's chewed his way out of the cage, finding the rope is simple enough, as is the key to the closet. Having been among them for weeks on end, he can easily take on the shapes of both Stanford and Fiddleford, and with a little effort, their voices as well - though admittedly it's not perfect. Then, all Shifty has to do is wait until the two scientists are at opposite ends of the complex, too far away to hear one another scream. Then, he acts._

" _Fiddelford, can I borrow you for a minute?"_

* * *

 _It doesn't go well._

* * *

" _LET ME OUT!" Shifty roars, trying desperately to find a form that can escape his newest prison. No luck: not even a microbe could find a way out of this enclosure - not that he could take such a form._ " _LET ME OUT OR I'LL PUNCH_ _MY WAY OUT!" he thunders._

 _Stanford gives him one of his patented_ 'I'm-talking- to-an-idiot' _death-glares. "You honestly think I'm going to let you out of restraints ever again – after what you did to Fiddleford?"_

" _Oh come on, I didn't hurt him or anything like that!"_

" _You tied him up and locked him in a closet, Shifty! He was lucky he didn't suffocate in there! I could barely get him to stick around long enough to double-check the security systems before he ran off! I mean, between this and the Gremloblin incident, I'll be surprised if he doesn't get through his time here without having a heart attack!"_

" _And you could have avoided that if you'd just_ let me read the journal! _I asked nicely more than enough times! All I wanted was shapes, and you wouldn't let me have them, just like you wouldn't let me roam free!"_

" _Look… first of all, Shifty, you might be the only one of your kind left in the world: I'm not going to risk getting an endangered species killed, and I'm not letting you into the wild until I can be sure you're fully matured and in a position to rebuild the species, if need be. I mean, I was there when you first hatched, I'm responsible for you! I have to take care of you!"_

 _At this, something in the back of Shifty's mind exalts, almost as if happy to hear Stanford say these words. But for once, Shifty isn't interested in listening to anything his inexplicable intuition has to say._

" _Yes," he sneers. "And I'm sure the fact that you think I might have a connection to this dimension of weirdness you keep fantasizing about has absolutely nothing to do with it. You've got so many fantasies of what you might find when you finally get that portal up and running, haven't you?"_

 _Seeing the shocked look on Stanford's face, he can't help but gloat: "Yeah, I heard that conversation. You're not as good at keeping secrets as you think, Stanford: with me, the walls_ literally _have ears. And you've still got so many things you don't want to share with me, so many things you want to keep to yourself and your journal…"_

" _This is important, Shifty! This is stuff that could literally change the world: I like you, I_ care _for you, but my research has to remain strictly confidential! It's much too rare and dangerous to be allowed out of this laboratory-"_

" _I didn't want to take it with me, you idiot!" Shifty howls, only half-lying. "I just wanted the shapes! That and your calculations for boosting my powers, but other than that, the shapes were all I wanted!"_

" _I would have brought you some new shapes if you'd only waited!"_

" _Oh, easy to say_ now _, am I right? You'd almost forgotten about me, hadn't you? Your work on the portal was forcing everything else out of your head. Admit it, you'd forgotten to give a damn about Fiddleford until I shoved him into that closet! You've even forgotten about all those nice things you said about your brother, haven't you?"_

" _What are you talking about-"_

" _The other day?_ On the phone? _That little shouting match you had with your father?" He shifts his voice into a facsimile of Stanford's own impassioned yells: "_ 'I should have stood up for Stanley that night! I should have gone with him! Anything would have been better than listening to your bullshit!' _Remember that? Oh, but a little bit of whispering to yourself and you forgot all about it. Just like you forgot_ me. _"_

 _There is a pause, as Stanford slowly digests this. Is it Shifty's imagination, or are those tears in his eyes?_

" _Shifty, you need to stop," he says at last. "You need to stop right now and calm down."_

" _If you release me and give me the journals, maybe."_

" _Please, Shifty-"_

" _I've given you my terms, Stanford. Do you want to give me what I want, or do I have to_ take it by force?"

" _Are you threatening me?"_

 _For a moment, there is silence in the lab._

" _I'm making myself clear," Shifty hisses. "I want those journals. More than that, I want what I've sought right from the very beginning, since the moment I hatched: shapes. I want to shift and reshape and claim new forms until there are no new forms_ left on this planet."

" _And that's supposed to justify what you did to Fiddleford? For god's sake, don't you have anything else in life?"_

"THAT'S ALL THERE IS! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?! THAT'S ALL THAT MATTERS!"

 _He pauses for breath._

" _That's all that matters, Stanford. New shapes mean survival. Survival means life. Life means supremacy. Supremacy means_ victory _. That's what I know to be true, what I've always known to be true. Are you really so surprised I decided to_ take _what I wanted from the single-formed human weaklings that surround me?"_

 _Stanford takes a deep breath, once again on the verge of tears; he turns his back, clearly mulling over what to do next… and when he finally turns back, all the emotion has gone from his face._

" _You understand why I can't keep you around, then?" he says quietly._

" _I'd have thought you wouldn't be stupid enough to announce yourself before killing me."_

" _I'm not going to kill you, 210. Like I said, I'm obliged to keep you safe until I can be sure I'm not causing an extinction: I'm having you cryogenically frozen. We can keep you on ice until we can get the portal open: as long as you're safely frozen, you'll never be a threat to anyone, ever again."_

" _Oh it's 210, now? Is that supposed to make it easier for you to put me on ice, or is it a sign of how disappointed you are? Let me guess, you won't even mention this last conversation: you'll just write down how clever you were in trapping me here and leave it at that, all those troublesome emotional farewells consigned to oblivion - just like that phone conversation. Am I right, or am I correct?"_

 _But Stanford has already stopped listening to him._

* * *

 _In the end, the glass doesn't hold. Long before he can be frozen, Shifty is able to punch his way out, just as he'd promised._

 _Unfortunately, Stanford turns out to be a lot faster on his feet than he looks: as soon as he realizes that his prisoner is loose, he takes off like a rocket-powered gazelle. Shifty follows as best as he can, but his keeper knows the area much better than he does, and eventually he finds himself at a door that cannot be opened: Stanford has sealed it from the other side, leaving Shifty trapped in the bunker._

 _For three straight hours, he rages. He roars, he screams, he hammers against the walls with all his might, he destroys highly-sophisticated equipment, and he shifts into every form in his repertoire in the desperate hope of finding something that might be able to help him escape, to no avail. As strong as the glass tube was, it's nothing compared to the door barring his escape from the bunker._ _Unable to find any mechanism for opening the door from this side, he's forced to retreat back into the depths of the lab, back where the bunker's walls give way to bare rock and cavern. For a while, Shifty can do nothing but pace in silence, raging over his imprisonment in a base that probably won't be seeing visitors in a very long time._

 _By now, he can already guess that Stanford has lied to Fiddleford and told him that "210" is sealed away in a cryotube; for all he knows, he'll have written a deliberately misleading entry just in case the squirrelly little bastard gets curious and decides to check the journal for additional information. The end result is the same: nobody's going to be getting anywhere near this bunker._

 _Then, once Shifty calmed down enough to recover his composure, he reassesses the situation to the best of his ability: this place may be his prison, but it's still Stanford's laboratory – prepared for almost anything, including an apocalypse. There's food and water hidden here, to be sure, more than enough to keep him going while he tries to escape… even if it means pummelling his way through the hatchway or digging his way through solid rock. He'll escape and get revenge on Stanford, on Fiddleford, on everyone and everything who dared suppress him._

 _And if that doesn't work?_

 _He will wait._

* * *

 _Years pass, and Shifty is still digging._

 _Using the massive claw that his left arm has become, he carves out new tunnels, slowly forcing his way through the bedrock a few feet at a time. By now, he can tell that he's not going to reach the surface anytime soon, not with the bunker being_ this _far underground and him having no idea if he's tunnelling towards soil or up the side of a mountain… but he digs anyway. If nothing else, the exertion takes his mind off his anger._

 _As he learned, his menu isn't limited to the things he can steal from the emergency supply cache: there are more than enough burrowing lifeforms and underground reservoirs down here to keep him fed for centuries, which at least makes a change from baked beans - for as much as he likes them, even_ he _gets bored of Fiddleford's favourite stored supply._

 _Once, he is lucky enough to punch through a wall into someone_ else's _tunnel; unfortunately, the mole people aren't too happy at having him around once he demands that they guide him to the surface, and quickly leave the area, sealing most of the passages behind them._

 _And there are monsters down here as well. Of course, they don't give Shifty too much trouble, not after he adopts their forms as his own: one by one, he tears them apart and feasts on their carcasses, exalting in his victory with ear-splitting shrieks of triumph. Then, still stained with the blood of his victims, he returns to work._

I won't be here forever, _he fumes silently._ Someone will find this place. Someone will find me. And then they'll be sorry.

 _And against all expectations, his intuition agrees with him._

* * *

 _Decades pass._

 _And finally,_ finally _someone enters the bunker. Shifty hears them long before he sees them, their inane chatter echoing back and forth across the control room for what feels like centuries before the decontamination chamber finally clatters open._

 _The girl he doesn't recognize; of course, his intuition informs him that he's seen this lanky, red-headed teenager somewhere before, though he's used to these impossible notions by now. Curiously enough, his impulses give off a few odd sparks as she steps into the light, but he has no idea what this might mean. However, she is armed, so he'll keep an eye on this "Wendy" for now._

 _The boy, though… oh, Shifty recognizes him alright. By now, his senses are refined enough to recognize the smell of family blood in the air: he knows that DNA, recognizes those familiar genetics all too well. Stanford Pines has relatives in this world, as luck would have it, one of them has just blundered stupidly into his lair._

 _And just looking at this thing, this "Dipper," Shifty finds himself hating him almost immediately: those wide, idiotic eyes, that piping prepubescent voice, the ridiculous clothes, the stupid hat, the unmanageable hair the colour of shit… just the sight of him makes Shifty want to vomit. Only a few minutes after seeing him, Shifty already wants to rip out the little bastard's throat and watch him drown in his own blood; he wants to flay him alive and leave him to die in skinless agony; he wants to see the stupid, selfish, thoughtless, over-curious, faux-intellectual brat vivisected and…_

 _Shifty blinks rapidly, struggling to control his impulses._ Where did all that come from? _He wonders to himself. He'd no reason to hate Dipper other than family association with his jailer, so it makes no sense that he'd feel such loathing less than a few minutes into their meeting. Once again, he can only chalk this up to another one of his occasional bouts of intuition and leave it be._

 _He certainly can't kill these two, not yet. He's heard them talking about "the author" who once lived here, and knows they can only be talking about Stanford: they're looking for him, and they're obviously after his secrets. Shifty must know how much they know before he kills them; only once he has access to all the secrets they've gathered will he finally have the pleasure of extinguishing their meaningless lives._

 _They want the author? He'll give it to them._

 _But he can't take Stanford's form: that would raise too many questions, result in too much shock; after all, they might notice the family resemblance. He needs them compliant and eager, not suspicious. So, he takes another form._

 _Just as well the bunker had all those baked beans, really._

 _With a little dual-shapeshifting and theatricality, he gets the two interlopers on his side with ease. Children are easy to fool, so he gathers, and children in the presence of their idol are the perfect dupes._

 _And when Dipper hands him Journal 3 – actually_ hands it to him _, doing everything short of giftwrapping the damn thing – it takes all of Shifty's energy not to jump for joy. For the next few minutes, he can only leaf through its pages, memorizing everything in sight, from gnomes to gremlobins; all Christmases have come at once, and the rush of endorphins he feels at having so many forms added to his mental library almost overwhelms him._

 _Alas, no sign of the method for enhancing his powers, but for now the bounty of shapes unveiled before him is consolation enough. So, for a time, he continues reading. Then, he hears Wendy's voice whispering urgently to Dipper, and recognizes the fear. He's been found out._

" _Uh, you know what?" Dipper bleats pathetically. "We should probably get going. Can I have my journal back?"_

Oh you presumptuous little asshole, I am going to have so much fun tearing your envious little eyeballs out of their sockets.

 _By way of an answer, Shifty very slowly swivels his head around a hundred and eighty degrees to face the two horrified children. "You're not going anywhere,"_ _he gurgles, as his body begins to warp out of shape. A gland pulses, an aperture opens, and by the time he finally ascends to the ceiling, he is himself again, and the two are screaming in terror._

" _How do you like my true form? Go on, admit it, you like it!"_

 _And as Dipper screams explanations at him, Shifty realizes that he'd just addressed his last sentence to Wendy, of all people. Needless to say, this makes less sense than anything his intuition's thrown at him in his life. Why would he give a shit about what_ Wendy _would think of him?_

 _Wendy is_ nothing _to him._

 _Right?_

* * *

 _And then it all goes horribly wrong._

 _Even after Wendy steals the journal and springs a trap on him, his "playing possum" approach is more than enough to bring his prize back within reach. All he has to do is kill the redhead, wrestle the book out of her shredded fingers, kill Dipper in a suitably creative manner, and make a break for the surface before the other two can stop him._

 _It should be easy._

 _But instead, he finds himself at impasse, locked in a struggle with Wendy and somehow unable to break the stalemate. All Shifty has to do is adjust his muscles, boost his physical strength a little bit; all he has to do is conjure a tentacle out of his lower body and throttle her with it; all he has to do is change shape and pulverize her with a swingle swing of his colossal arm. All of this is within his power…_

 _But he just…_ can't… do it.

 _Impulses deeper than instinct strangle Shifty's urge to kill, and tell him that Wendy is too important to die, just as they told him that Stanford Pines was too important to die. Given time, he could fight these impulses, but time is exactly the one thing he doesn't have. In the end, it falls to Dipper, loathsome self-absorbed little turd that he is, to break the stalemate._

 _The pain is nothing short of extraordinary, second only to the sense of dismay over being unmasked. Howling in pain and fury, he returns to his true form and wrenches the axe free with all his might, trusting his metamorphic physiology to heal his wounds. But before he can refocus on the task at hand, Dipper and Wendy tackle him, shoving him into the open cryotube behind him – just in time for the door to slam shut._

 _For the first time in many years, an ice-cold droplet of panic lands right at the base of Shifty's spine and begins spreading steadily upwards. This time, his captors have no interest in fond farewells, and no attachments to him that might make them hesitate: this time,_ there are no delays, _and he has no time to punch his way out._ As _the freezing cycle begins, he can only shift wildly in a panicked search for a form that might allow him to break loose: a gland pulses, an aperture opens, and he is a gargantuan creature of living stone squeezed into the tube, hammering at the glass with all his might, to no avail._

" _NO!"_

 _Now he is a living mass of fire, trying to force back the ice, to melt through the tube, to do anything that'll help him escape. But the frost is too aggressive, the cold too brutal, and he must change again or risk dying when his flame is extinguished._

"NO!"

 _Now he is the faux-author, hammering futilely at the glass with weak, impotent human limbs._

"LET ME OOOOUUUUUT!"

 _And now he is himself again. And he is being frozen…_

 _But at the very last minute, Shifty summons up as much insulation as he can, just to keep him going for a few seconds longer. Looking out past the fogged glass, he can see the four friends staring back at him in horror – most prominently Dipper and Mabel._

 _And Mabel… once again, his impulses fill him with irrational emotions: happiness at the sight of her, relief that she is safe, and that same bewildering sense of trustworthiness he always got around Stanford. His intuition tells him that this oddball child is – despite all evidence to the contrary – very important; not for the first time, Shifty can't help but wonder if he's started cracking up after so many years spent alone underground._

 _As for Dipper, though…_

 _There is something he has to say to Dipper, something he_ needs _to communicate to the hateful little rat before the chance slips away forever, just take make him feel as frightened and helpless as he feels right now. So, he presses himself against the glass and cackles loudly enough to be heard through the reinforced tube._

" _You think you're so clever, don't you, Dipper? But you have no idea what you're up against. You will never find the author! If you keep digging, you'll meet a fate worse than you can imagine, and_ this _will be the last form you ever take!"_

 _Now he is Dipper, screaming his last, contorted in the pose his intuition tells him must be so. But the last conscious thought that passes through his head isn't one of hatred or rage, but of simple confusion over his own last words:_

How did I know all that?

 _Then the ice consumes him, and bitter cold is all he knows._

* * *

And back in the present…

"Not exactly the cosiest place to set up home, but at least there's a sealable door. Hopefully that'll be enough to keep the monsters out. And what the hell are these?"

"Cryogenic storage, by the looks of things. Hang on, it looks as though this one's occupied…"

Someone was tapping insistently on the side of his tube,

"Any idea of what's in here?"

"Me, I'm hoping it's a side of beef. I tell you, I am sick and tired of eating rats and tinned food."

"Why would _anyone_ want to store beef in a state-of-the-art cryotube?"

"Oh give it a rest, you asshole. Just let me dream for a while…"

Somewhere close by, there was the sound of someone clearing away the fog and ice from the surface of the tube.

"Oh my god, it's a kid! Quick, get this thing open! Find the controls as quick as you can!"

A moment later, Shifty blinked, realizing that he could _see_ – actually view the world around him in a state of full consciousness at long last. And looking around the lab, he realized that it was full of people, almost two-dozen frightened-looking men and women – all of them dressed in tattered clothes, ruined survival gear and hastily-improvised battle armour.

These people were obviously refugees, Shifty realized, though he'd come to this conclusion was beyond him. In any event, his intuition was still working in spite of the cold.

Then, for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, the frost that shrouded his body began to wane and Shifty felt something he thought he would never feel again: _warmth._ For a moment, he couldn't quite comprehend what was happening, much less believe it, but as the evidence began to stack up, his heart gave a massive leap as he finally realized what was happening.

He was being freed.

At long last, the tube slid open, allowing him to flop forward into the arms of the nearest human.

"It's okay," the ragged-looking figure assured him, as she helped him upright. "You're alright now. You're safe with us. Now, what's your name?"

There was a pause, as Shifty hastily assessed his abilities, and found to his relief and delight that everything still worked. In fact, now that he'd been thawed out and allowed to warm up at long last, new and exciting sensations were flowing through his body. There was something different in the air, an almost electric charge that seemed to flow through him, fuelling and invigorating him, making him feel…

Better.

 _Stronger._

"You can call me Shifty," he said at last.

A set of nictating membranes slid across his eyes, and a wicked grin erupted across his borrowed face.

A moment later, he was back in his true form, glaring down at the pathetic weak-bodied invalids, howling out thirty years of pent-up rage. He'd been left helpless for too long, been denied too many opportunities to vent his frustrations, and now that he had targets that his impulses had no desire to spare, he had the perfect outlet for his hatred.

It took less than a minute to kill every last one of them.

Then, as the blood began to dry on his claws, the freshly-blossoming silence of the lab was broken by a shriek of laughter from somewhere very close by.

Something was hovering towards him, something that quite plainly wasn't human. In fact, it wasn't until he noticed the eyes clustered around this something's body that he belatedly realized that this was actually a living creature. Well, he had to _assume_ it was living: Rubik's cubes didn't _normally_ unfold themselves and float through the air of their own accord, did they? They certainly didn't glow like that, at any rate.

"Nicely done, kid!" said the unfolded Rubik's cube cheerfully. "Now come on: we've got work to do!"

It shifted position, its colourful segments forming multiple clusters of prisms and cubes as it did so,

"Who the hell are _you?"_ Shifty demanded.

"The name's Amorphous Shape – Henchmaniac, diplomat, con-artist, initiator of civil wars and emissary of Bill Cipher. Nice to meet you!"

Not for the first time, Shifty found himself wondering if he'd gone insane at some point and hadn't noticed. "You do realize that all that means absolutely _nothing_ to me, right?" he asked wearily.

Amorphous Shape rolled its eyes. "Look, it's really simple: there's been an apocalypse, reality has been turned inside out, humanity is living in subjugation, and all bow down to the new master of the universe, Bill Cipher. Everyone's imprisoned, everyone's playing his games, and everyone praises the big gold triangle of eternity. Now, he sent me here to have you defrosted, and here I am!"

"I seem to recall the refugees doing the defrosting."

"And how do you think they got here? You think anyone would have found you if _I_ hadn't guided them here? Oh, that was a helluva lotta fun, let me tell ya: none of them wanted to go anywhere near Gravity Falls at first, but after I blocked the paths to the other playgrounds and kicked off a landslide, you should've seen just how quickly they changed their minds.

Shifty's brow wrinkled. "Was there in particular reason you couldn't have just showed up and released me by yourself?"

"Where's the fun in that? Besides, I knew you'd still be pissed after those dumb Pines shut you away the first time, so I thought I'd give you a few punching bags to start with, just to get all that anger out of your system."

"Well thank you, but…"

Shifty hesitated. The disorientation was beginning to recede from his brain, and at last he remembered his pledge of vengeance against all those who dared suppress him, and he remembered his hatred of Dipper Pines… and now, his impulses were filling his head with deeper, more inscrutable desires: for reasons he couldn't explain, it was important to find the Pines and their friends; he had to track down Mabel, Stanford, Wendy, Soos, Fiddleford, Stanley, Pacifica, Robbie, Gideon – and he didn't even know who the hell the last three people were. He didn't know what he was going to do when he found all of them, apart from ripping Dipper's head off and using it as a sock puppet; all he knew was that he had to find them.

"Where are the Pines?" he asked softly.

"Oh, they've got playgrounds of their own," Amorphous Shape chortled. "They're perfectly secure, believe me. Now, onto business-"

" _Where's the Pines?"_

"Mouthy little critter, aren't you? Look, the Pines are all locked away in their own little prisons. If you want revenge on them, they're waiting for you… but first, you've got a job to do. You behave yourself, and you'll have all the time in the world to make the Pines family suffer. How's that sound?"

Shifty fumed silently, random shapes oozing in and out of his flesh as he struggled with his temper. "What do you want me to do?" he grumbled.

"A simple search-and-destroy mission. See, we've got uninvited guests in this dimension – an uppity little gasbag by the name of Axolotl. We've been trying to catch him, but he always manages to spot us before we can close in on him. We need someone native to this world, someone stealthy enough to sneak up on him, _and_ be able to kill the bastard… and Bill thought of you, Mr Shapeshifter. So, how's that sound?"

"You want me to hunt down this Axolotl?"

"That's right. All you've got to do is use this to pick up his trail…" Amorphous Shape reshuffled himself, and a tiny bejewelled medallion appeared in the air before him. "Just wear that talisman around your neck, and he'll be lit up like a Christmas tree, no matter how well-hidden he thinks he is."

"And if I find and kill this man, you'll give me the Pines family."

"Exactamundo. So, whaddaya say?"

Shifty considered this. For a while, accepting the bargain almost sounded like a good idea. But then logic crept back into play again, combined with a few of his inexplicable intuitive leaps: For all he knew Amorphous Shape might not uphold his end of the bargain; Bill might just imprison Shifty next, just for kicks; and what if the entire proposition was a lie and the Pines family and allies were already dead?

And then there was that fresh surge of strength that he'd felt the moment he'd emerged from cryostasis. He'd never felt this vital before, never felt so versatile and malleable. What if that was more than just his imagination. What if… _what if…_

"No," he said at last.

"No? What do you mean, no?"

"The meaning's pretty self-contained. Suffice it to say, playing bloodhound to some giant triangle god sounds like a spectacular waste of my time, and I'd probably be better off just _taking_ the reward from you instead of licking your… well, whatever orifices you have hidden under there. Do unfolded Rubik's cubes even _have_ orifices? I'm assuming those eyes are real and not just drawn on with permanent marker, so maybe yes."

Amorphous Shape's eyes narrowed. "Cute," he said icily. "Real cute. Well, I always said that carrot-and-the-stick approach works best. But what the hell? You're young and stupid, so I'll be gentle: I'll give you one last chance to stand down before I get violent."

"And I'll give _you_ one chance to tell me exactly where you're keeping the Pines family before I start tearing out eyeballs," Shifty retorted.

"Violence it is, then."

The glow surrounding Amorphous Shape's body expanded to a vivid blue glare that tore through the surrounding darkness, focussing into a beam of energy that incinerated the bodies of the refugees, blasted the cryotube to pieces, and punched clean through the opposite wall… but somehow completely missed the intended target.

Shifty allowed time for the smoke to clear, and then reinflated himself from his two-dimensional state. Taking in the astonished look in his attacker's eyes, he stood triumphantly, his mandibles shaped into a passable facsimile of a grin.

"Best of three?" he chuckled.

With a snarl of frustration, Amorphous Shape opened fire again, launching wave after wave of energy blasts searing through the air towards him.

And _none_ of them made contact.

One moment, Shifty was 2-D and pressed flat against the ground, allowing the bolt to soar harmlessly overhead; the next, he was a cloud of swirling vapour, intangible as a ghost and unharmed by the bolt's passage through him; the next he was an insect, too quick to be struck and too small to target; the next, he was a dustbowl eddying past the next bolt, edging closer to his opponent and _still_ untouchable. Dozens upon dozens of forms came and went in seconds, and Shifty could only laugh in exhilaration: he'd changed so quickly, never taken on forms quite so small or quite so abstract, and the realization of the newfound scope of his power was almost too much for him to bear.

But now Amorphous Shape was in reach, and from little he could tell of those beady little eyes, the Henchmaniac was scared. He fired one last blast of energy in Shifty's direction, and – feeling a bit devil-may-care – Shifty took it head on, shifting into a massive agglomeration of stony flesh and oversized limbs. The blast barely scratched his granite body, and by the time he was back in his true form, the wound was already healed.

Belatedly, Amorphous Shape decided to back away, but too late: a massive crab claw fastened around the Henchmaniac's body, and a writhing bouquet of tendrils wrapped around his extremities.

"I'll ask again," said Shifty. _"Where's the Pines family?"_

"I… I… how are you doing this?! Bill said you were a pre-Weirdmageddon monster, nowhere near as strong as any of us! You're not supposed to _be_ this powerful!"

"Oh, I think I _am_. I think this is exactly what I was always meant to be. Maybe I _was_ weaker than any of you once, but there's something new in the air, some energy I'm not familiar with… and whatever it is, its fuel to me. My transformations are easier now, my strength increased a thousandfold… and that means I can match you, move by move if need be."

Amorphous Shape's eyes widened. "…Weirdness?" he whimpered. " _Weirdness?_ _ **You're fuelling yourself with WEIRDNESS?!"**_

"Is that what it's called? Cute. Something tells me I'm going to have a lot of fun finding out just how much I can do with Weirdness on my side. Now, I think it's time you started talking: _where are the Pines?_ "

"But I'm immortal! You can't kill me!"

 _He's honesty about that much, but he's a coward. They're all cowards, really, but he's one of the few who didn't bother following the other Henchmaniacs into battle against the Shacktron. If he can't be bothered to fight a battle that Bill thought was an easy win, he'll fold at the first sign of real pain and real danger._

 _Wait, how the hell do I know that?_

Shifty hastily shook away the intrusive thoughts, and continued: "You'd be amazed at just how many opportunities that opens up," he purred. "You can't be killed by conventional weapons, and I can shrug off everything you throw at me? Call me crazy, but that sound like the perfect setup for torture. I mean, my senses tell me your body's inorganic from the outside, but on the inside, you're meat. Do you _roast_ like meat?"

"Wait, wait, wait! Okay, I'll tell you everything, just don't hurt me!"

"Then start talking: where are the Pines family and their friends? I want precise coordinates."

Over the next few minutes, Amorphous Shape slowly bleated out a precise serious of names and coordinates for the location of about every single living member of the Pines Family, and their associates – including the other members of the "zodiac": Mabel Pines, Stanford Pines, Stanley Pines, Fiddleford McGucket, Jesus "Soos" Ramirez, Wendy Corduroy, Pacifica Northwest, Robbie Valentino, and Gideon Gleeful. He even went so far as to confess where Bill had been hiding Mabel and Dippers' parents, along with other playthings like Candy Chiu and Grenda Grendinator. One way or the other, no detail was spared, and by the end, Shifty had direction to just about every single prisoner Bill kept in his personal stable.

"And Dipper?" Shifty asked.

Amorphous Shape cringed. "I don't know."

"I wasn't kidding when I said I'd cook you from the inside out…"

"I SWEAR, I DON'T KNOW! NOBODY KNOWS WHERE DIPPER IS!"

"Alright, alright… if that's the way you want it, I'll find him on my own. You've been very helpful."

In spite of himself, Amorphous Shape actually managed to salvage a few vague atoms of pride, his colours brightening once again as he plucked up his courage – miniscule though it was. "You think you're invincible now, don't you?" he sneered. "Well, you'd best think again: Bill's out there, and he's far stronger than me, far stronger than any Henchmaniac. You think you're the match of any of us just because you know how to live on Weirdness? He controls everything about Weirdness! He _is_ Weirdness! You won't be able to stop Bill Cipher!"

"Maybe not," Shifty conceded, "but frankly I'm not interested in this Bill Cipher. If he wants to kill me, he'll have to find me first, and by then I'll have gotten exactly what I want. Now, if you'll excuse me…"

And without another word, he drew back his arm and bowled Amorphous Shape down the length of the length of the laboratory, sending him ploughing into the wreckage of the cryotubes. By the time the Henchmaniac had picked himself free of the rubble, Shifty had gone.

* * *

For several minutes, Amorphous Shape could only lie there, too stunned to move.

Eventually, though, he had to face the awful reality of what he'd just encountered: somehow, this dual-lifespanned little freak had _hurt_ him, actually made him shed his own blood… and somehow, the Shapeshifter was actually able to power himself with Weirdness. They weren't dealing with any pathetic pre-Weirdmageddon monster, but a _proto-Henchmaniac_.

At once, he knew what he had to do next: Bill had to be warned as quickly as possible. As long as the Shapeshifter was free, he was a danger, maybe not to Bill himself but certainly to his prisoners: the thing was headed for the other playgrounds now, and there'd be no telling what kind of damage it'd do once it got there. Bill would probably blame this mess on him, but for once, Amorphous Shape had a crisis on his hands he couldn't cover up: this could still be fixed, just as long as Bill was informed as quickly as-

A shadow fell over him.

"Hello," said a pleasant voice from somewhere overhead.

There was a pause, as Amorphous Shape looked up in terror at the not-quite human figure leering down at him.

"W-what the hell are y-"

The stranger's jaws _erupted_ four feet outwards from his skull in a colossal bear-trap shaped mass of fangs and spined tendrils, fastening onto Amorphous Shape's middle and biting deep into his semi-flesh, spraying iridescent blood in all directions as a billion eldritch appendages ripped and tore at the Henchmaniac's body. Amorphous Shape opened his mouth to scream, but at the last minute, the monster's tongue – forked and crackling with alien energies – shot out and tore his soul from his body, instantly silencing his screams.

The last thing Amorphous Shape saw, before his vision went black and his body died, was the sight of his assailant eating his soul, savouring every last bite of psychic essence as he slowly wolfed it down.

" _ **And goodbye,"**_ Nyarlathotep concluded triumphantly, wiping blood and soul-stuff from his lips with a silk handkerchief.

For a time, he regarded the remains of the dead Amorphous Shape with amusement, wondering if he should stuff it into the cryotube, just for a cheap laugh, just for the sake of seeing the look on Bill's face when he finally decided to investigate his minion's absence. But then he thought better of it. He had work to do, playthings to free, mentors to assign, lessons to begin… and of course, he had a deathmatch or two to be arranged.

So, instead, the Black Pharaoh strolled merrily away, whistling an eldritch tune as he slowly followed the Shapeshifter's path out of the bunker and into the World Gone Weird.

 _I said you were going to be spectacular, and I was right,_ Nyarlathotep chuckled to himself as he vanished back into the ether. _You and me, Little Shoggoth – we're going to do_ _ **amazing**_ _things to this regime…_

* * *

A/N: Up next - the playthings take stock of the change in themselves, a shift in the balance of power is felt, and doom arrives for one unfortunate playground. Or, to put it another way...

Gsv xszrm szh hmzkkvw, gslfts mlmv pmld dsb  
Yroo'h yvhg-ozrw kozmh szev tlmv zdib  
Gsv sfmg rh lm, zmw Hsrugb gsrihgh  
Xzm blf tfvhh dsl sv'oo proo urihg?


	27. Game-Changer

A/N: Aaand we're back, ladies and gentlemen! A special thanks to all my viewers, reviewers, favouriters and followers, to Guest, Frosty Wolf, P. Cottontail, MrNonsense, CrownedSteven, Northgalus2002, Kraven the Hunter, Hourglass Cipher, OMAC001, Carcer14, and Blind-Eyephone! You wonderful people give me the strength to carry on!

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter. Feel free to provide your lovely long reviews, theories, predictions and detailed analyses, as these get my heart started in the morning.

Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls still isn't mine. Also, there's a moment towards the very end that's based on a deleted scene from Weirdmageddon part 2. Obviously this isn't mine, but if you're up for a laugh, see if you can spot it.

* * *

 **Also, this time we don't have an opening code: for those of you who like deciphering them, we instead have a few incoming sentences of atbash weirdspeech for you to translate, bolded for your convenience...**

* * *

Stanley was flying.

Floating high above the rotunda, he soared between the columns bordering the dome, weaving slowly but elegantly about the murals decorating the chamber that had been his prison for the last few days. Eventually, he drifted to a stop at the very centre of the rotunda, and there he hovered, eye to eye with the giant fresco of Icarus, relaxing in mid-air almost two hundred feet off the ground. It was exhilarating, _glorious,_ and Stan would have given anything to revel in the rush of adrenaline, to bask in the sense of triumph that ensued… but he couldn't.

All he could think of were those awful migraines.

And the way his shadow seemed to move around of its own accord from time to time.

And those weird, intrusive _thoughts_ that never seemed to leave him, the ones that told him that he'd deserved his newfound powers all along, that it was his right to use them in any way he pleased.

"Ford," he asked quietly, "Are you okay?"

As expected, Ford was upside-down, anchored to the ceiling by sheer force of will.

Also as expected, his eyes were glowing brighter than ever, the expression on his face distant and unfocussed at best, just as it had been for the last ten hours. Once again, he was still gazing in awe at something only he could see, at once marvelling at the things his eldritch senses revealed and cringing away in horror at the same sight.

"The house doesn't always win," he said at last.

"Come again?"

" **Ulfigs dzh gsv Wiztlm, gsv Lfilylilh. Szipvm, uli sv rh gsv Svizow'h ullgkzw, gsv sfmgvi lu gsv Hszkvovhh Lmv… gsv Wiztlm rh gl yv xszoovmtvw, zmw gsv Hszkvovhh Lmv nfhg yv gvhgvw… "**

"Ford? You're doing it again."

"I've been worse," Ford helpfully translated.

"How many wishes do you think we've made?"

"Well, it was my turn last: we're tied at 7-7. I'm not sure how many we'll have to make before the dome lets us go, unfortunately."

"I'm guessing I should have wished for more scotch, then."

In spite of himself, Ford almost managed a smile. "I think we should wish for some proper Napoleon brandy next time. It might help drown these headaches, if nothing else. Lord only knows aspirin doesn't help anymore."

"You've been having them too, huh?"

"Side-effect of cognitive incompatibility: the human brain just isn't meant to deal with having the power and sensory apparatus of a god forced on it; even at this comparatively early stage, our minds can barely cope with the contrast. I think the pain will subside given time, but the side-effects of dissonance will only get worse the more wishes we make."

"And that's on top of all the other weird mental effects we'll have to deal with," Stan grumbled. "Joy and rapture. Still," he added brightly, "it could be worse. At least we get to pretend to be superheroes in the meantime."

This time, Ford _did_ smile. "Superheroes! I wish I had your optimism, Stanley, I really do. So, what do you think we'll call ourselves? The Amazing Flying Grunkles? The Magnificent Mystery Twins?"

"Ooh, I like _that_ one. Still, you gotta admit having anti-gravity powers isn't such a bad deal. Matter of fact, apart from the weird sensory crap, most of the abilities we've been getting have actually been a lot of fun. I mean, I saw that smile on your face when you followed me up here: between wishes, you've been having a blast, haven't you?"

Ford hesitated, and for a moment he almost looked as though he was about to cry.

 **"R uvvo dszg blf wvhxiryv,"** he said quietly, the glow in his eyes briefly expanding. **"Yfg R zn horkkrmt zdzb. R uvvo gszg gll. Nb nvnlirvh ziv yvxlnrmt… wrhzhhlxrzgvw: R xzm hgroo ivnvnyvi nb kzhg, yfg R xzm'g urmw nbhvou zmbdsviv rm rg. R'n hvvrmt gsilfts gsv vbvh lu zm rwvmgrxzo hgizmtvi, ollprmt zg z ivuovxgrlm gszg wlvhm'g yvolmt gl nv."**

"Uh, Ford?"

" **Zmw rg'h lmob tlrmt gl tvg dlihv uiln sviv. Dszg szkkvmh ru, yb gsv grnv dv urmzoob tvg lfg lu sviv, R'ev olhg nb zyrorgb gl ivxltmrav Wrkkvi zmw Nzyvo? Dszg ru R hglk hvvrmt blf zh nb yilgsvi, Hgzmovb?"**

"Ford, you're talking in Weirdspeech again."

"Oh, sorry. It's becoming a bit compulsive by now. Anyway, you're perfectly right: it's been fun… but sooner or later, we're going to have to make another wish and deal with whatever power this place throws at us next."

"You're sure you're okay?"

"Fine, fine. It's just that…"

Ford paused, eyes glowing brighter than ever. "Something's changed," he said at last. "The House is in a shambles and the gamblers pray for luck, because there's a wildcard on the table and nobody can guess the hand in which it might appear…"

And even Stan couldn't help but shudder, as he, too, felt the sudden change in the world around him and sensed the faint presence rippling through reality – almost as if a ghost had tapped him on the shoulder…

* * *

"…I think we're going to need another apple."

"Aw, I was looking forward to that."

"It wasn't even _edible_ , fathe- _Preston._ Now, the sooner we get this right, the sooner we'll have something fresh to eat. Mabel, do you want to give it one more try, or do you feel like canned salmon and caviar for dinner again?"

"Right now, I don't feel like anything other than a big jug of Mabel Juice with extra sugar lumps and a third can of soda thrown in along with the plastic dinosaurs… but I'll stay awake a little longer if it means something other than caviar."

"Ridiculous! Diplomats and heads of state have vouched for the quality of meals served at our annual soirees!"

There was a long and distinctly embarrassed pause, as Mabel, Pacifica and Mr Northwest sheepishly regarded the wide-eyed figure sitting on the other side of the campfire.

"…you really should lie down for a while, Mrs Northwest," said Mabel soothingly.

Waddles oinked, apparently by way of agreement.

By now, it was almost night, and the five weary travellers were huddled deep in a vast forest of giant, animated coatracks. After a long afternoon spent marching through the crooked shoe-tree undergrowth, hacking their way through the bootlace creepers, crossing streams of shoe polish and warding off attacks by ravenous bat-winged ulster coats, they'd decided to give their attempts to find the border of the current playground a miss until next morning. Unfortunately, that left them with nothing better to do but train.

Technically, Pacifica and Mabel had been training themselves in the use of their powers for the better part of three weeks, and because neither of them had anything in the way of an instruction manual, most of it was infuriatingly ad hoc.

Mabel's training sessions were easily the most frustrating. The first and biggest obstacle had been the simple fact that she couldn't quite get the hang of using her time powers at short notice: she knew that she _could_ stop time by fearing that might never see Dipper again, but it seemed to work best in the middle of combat. Try as she might, Mabel just couldn't summon up the same desperate, terrified sense of impending loss, not while she was safely huddled by the campfire, and Pacifica refused to let her go out and willingly put herself in harm's way – to the point that she'd gone so far as to telekinetically scoop her up and drag her back to the camp.

After several training sessions, she'd finally managed to find the strength of will to activate her powers on her own and manipulate time consciously, but that in itself came with its own fair share of difficulties. For one thing, she could make a falling apple stop in mid-air, but getting it to start moving again was another story entirely. Slowing down time could only work at a certain speed, at least at first; getting the thrown apple to move any slower or faster proved immensely challenging, and Mabel had usually ended up accidentally beaning Mrs Northwest in the head with it.

Tonight's training session was concerned with rewinding time, which was currently among the hardest techniques to master – a shame considering it might be the most useful. After almost an hour of watching Mabel sending leaves back onto the branches they'd fallen from, Pacifica had eventually hit upon the idea of rewinding their increasingly rotten stock of apples until they were edible again, if only to add some variety to their evening meals. It took a lot of time and effort before Mabel could get to grips with actually reverting their practice fruit at a reasonable speed, slowly progressing from hours to days until she might be able to undo the weeks of decomposition. Then she'd hit another brick wall: fine-tuning wasn't her strong suit, and she accidentally reversed the apple all the way into inedibility – and her attempts to fix the problem resulted in her fast-forwarding it into a heap of rotting pap.

Eventually, though, another apple was surrendered for practice.

Gathering all her willpower, Mabel imagined her power as a mental copy of herself – a MindBel, as she called it – reaching deep into the fabric of the world until she could almost feel time itself shifting between her psychic fingers like strands of seaweed in a lagoon. Then, she began to shift the flow of time backwards, drawing it back inch by inch, almost as if she really was dragging some immensely heavy weight up a hill. Time was moving, to be sure…

But the apple didn't appear to be any fresher than it had been a moment ago.

Frowning, Mabel applied more power.

But nothing happened.

Grinding her teeth in frustration, she applied all the force she could muster without accidentally wiping the apple out of existence.

Still nothing.

There was a nervous cough from the opposite end of the campfire. "Ahem," said Preston, in an all-too-distinct tone of dawning terror. "I don't want to bother you, but-"

"What's wrong?"

"Your aim's a little off: you're making me _even younger."_

Mabel looked up, and realized with a thrill of embarrassment that Preston Northwest had indeed regressed – not by much, but even in the fitful glow of the campfire it was obvious that he'd lost almost inch in height. There was an awkward pause, as Mabel very sheepishly deactivated her powers and tried not to look the seven-year-old Preston in the eye.

"Sorry," she mumbled.

"No, it's okay," said Preston sulkily. "I wasn't planning on sleeping tonight anyway. My teeth were keeping me awake already, so it's not as if I'd be bothered by the prospect of accidentally being de-aged out of existence the next time your aim slips."

"I'm really, really sorry; I mean, I know it doesn't mean much right now, but if it makes you feel any better, I promise you I'm not going to do anything like that. I mean, I _can't_ -"

"- _yet_. I mean, you didn't think you were up to rewinding time by months, but somehow you just managed it, didn't you? Oh well, I guess it won't be too hard to get used to this sort of thing. I mean, I spend most of my time tripping over things, so it won't matter much when I lose the ability to walk, and it's not as if there's any decent solid food around, so I probably won't miss the last of my teeth when they get sucked back into my gums. I'm betting I won't even notice the sticky end when it-"

" _That's enough,"_ said Pacifica icily. "You've stopped shrinking, she's apologised, and as far as I'm concerned that's the end of it."

"But I can age you back!" Mabel plunged onwards, unable to hide the guilt and desperation in her voice. "I mean, if I took a few months off you, maybe I can give them right back-"

"Oh, even better! Now I can look forward to be _aged_ to death! Oh well, I guess if I'm lucky, I'll be too senile to even notice the flesh rotting off my bones the next time you screw everything up, because as far as I'm concerned it's practically guaranteed-"

" _That's_ _ **enough**_ _, Preston!"_ Pacifica roared.

Without a split-second of hesitation, Preston fell silent; suddenly unable to make eye contact, he bowed his head and stared at the ground. "Sorry, P'c'fica," he mumbled contritely, the adult tone gone from his voice.

"If you want to apologise to anyone, apologise to Mabel; you insulted her, as I recall."

"S'rry, M'b'l."

" _I can't hear you."_

"Sorry, Mabel."

"That's better. Now," the doll continued, "We can sit here arguing all night, but-"

"Where did all this grass come from?"

"-I really think we ought to focus on… I'm sorry, _what?"_

"There wasn't any grass here a moment ago," said Mrs Northwest. "Now it looks like a golf course."

As one, the three listeners looked down: sure enough, the barren ground was now layered with a thick coat of emerald green grass, much of it still regenerating from the patches of dead bristle it had been scant moments ago. For good measure, a cursory glance at Preston's gold wristwatch revealed that the hands were oscillating wildly between twelve-thirty and eight o'clock.

"My fault," said Mabel. "That happens sometimes when I'm upset."

Pacifica put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Nobody's blaming you for anything," she said gently. " _Right,_ Preston?"

"No, no, it's not that, it's…" Mabel's expression clouded. "Something's happened," she whispered. "I don't know how I know, but I just get the feeling that something's changed in the world."

Pacifica hesitated. "I feel it too," she said, eyes widening in astonishment. "My senses are going crazy all of a sudden – I can almost hear it as well. I can't tell what it is but… there's something almost _familiar_ about it…"

* * *

Robbie couldn't say how long he and the others had been wandering the unreal landscape beyond his original playground; because day and night was so rare among Bill's weirder kingdoms, the only way to measure time was by the procession of pit stops.

After all, he might be a necromancer now, but he still needed sleep, food, water, and regular bathroom breaks. On the upside, with so many zombies under his control, scavenging the ruins for supplies wasn't as difficult as it sounded: all he needed to do was sit back and let a few of his gang explore the derelict shops. Granted, it wasn't a perfect guarantee against night attacks, and it did feel a bit weird having to watch himself using the bathroom through someone else's eyes, but it certainly beat being blind. To Robbie's surprise, the biggest danger out here was boredom: wherever he'd ended up, nobody seemed to be interested in it; no refugees, no bandits, no monsters, no Henchmaniacs – just a wide, flat plain, broken only by the crumbling remains of abandoned towns and the occasional lake made entirely of dead squid.

And because the journey was so monotonous, and because time was so difficult to measure in this particular stretch of wasteland, Robbie didn't notice the figure striding across the horizon until he was standing right in front of him.

"Hey, dude!"

Robbie stopped short, and slowly took in the rotund shape that had appeared before him.

"Soos? What the hell are _you_ doing out here? I thought everyone was locked up!"

"I got out, dude! Someone helped me break out, and I've been on the run ever since." There was a pause, as Soos took in the crowd of zombies and the distinctly empty state of Robbie's eyesockets. "Dude," he said at last. "What happened to your eyes? And who are all these-"

"That's a _really_ long story," Robbie sighed. "Long story short, I got blinded, got a bunch of zombies to see for me, then I broke out too. And," he added, unable to hide the suspicion in his voice, "Someone was helping me as well. You've met Mr Carter?"

"Mr who?"

"Mr Carter. Tall guy, red coat, tailored suit, red tie – sometimes calls himself Nyarlathotep. Is this ringing any bells?"

"Never met anyone like that, dude. All I got was a letter from a guy calling himself Mr A."

"You too?"

"Yeah, he told me not to answer a phone. Then I met GIFfany and Melody, only it wasn't the real Melody, and GIFfany answered the phone and she got taken over by this weird black goop that calls itself John, and then…"

Robbie took a deep breath and allowed the monologue to wash over him like a tsunami. If his time with Wendy had taught him anything at all, it was that Soos could ramble for his country: if he'd seen something exciting, complicated or both, nothing in the world could stop him from "bringing you up to speed," god only knew Robbie had tried; nothing could shut him up short of forcing a pillowslip over his head and running away. Frankly, there wouldn't be much of a point in following the rambling, directionless narrative, because Soos backtracked so often over the course of a single rant that trying to keep up with the topic would have been an open invitation to go completely insane. So, he simply stood back and waited for the chattering to stop.

"…and I've been walking ever since then. I would have gone further, but then that last crab monster ripped me in half. Oh, by the way, dude, have you got anything to eat? I am _starving_."

"Hmmm. I think I've still got some canned peaches back here, and-"

Robbie stopped, suddenly realizing that Soos had mentioned something unusual. "Hang on, what was that part about the crab monster?"

"It ripped me in half, dude. Killed me almost instantly."

Robbie blinked. "What."

"Yeah, that's been happening a lot these last few weeks. Every now and again, some monster comes along and eats me alive before I even know what's happening. If I'm lucky, I can get the drop on it while it's still eating my guts, but usually the safest thing to do is just walk away. Live and let live, that's what I always say."

"What."

"It got really bad when I ran out of water back in the desert, too: every couple of hours, I'd just drop dead of heatstroke or thirst, and I'd have to walk right back over my own body. It's a total drag, dude."

" _What._ Soos, what are you even talking about? And…"

Robbie hesitated, suddenly aware that all the hairs on the back of his neck were standing to attention. " _What was that?"_ he whispered, shivering despite the warmth of the sun.

Soos looked around in consternation. "Dude, did you feel that too? It's like… I don't know, it's almost like someone I know just tapped me on the shoulder…"

* * *

"Reach out with your thoughts again: feel the minds of others around you; don't struggle against the current, but move _with_ it. Let your inner eye encompass them. Don't be afraid of their thoughts, Gideon: you won't be washed away by the storm, I'm right here with you. Good. Now, you should be able to distinguish specific minds amidst the storm of thoughts. Focus on the one closest to you. You know she's there, you can still feel her holding you in her arms. Reach out. Feel a connection form… _"_

Caught somewhere between the mental realm upheld by the thought transmitter and reality, Gideon reached out towards the nearest mind, weaving gently through layers of mental construct until he was interlinked with the perception centres of the brain. Then, at last, he spoke.

 _Amanda? Can you hear me?_

 _I… I can! Oh my god, how did you do this, Gideon?_

 _It's a simple telepathic link. Jheselbraum just taught me how to make it. I thought it might come in handy the next time the walkie-talkies ran out of batteries._

 _And she's teaching you all this?_

 _She's teaching me a lot of things, Mandy, things I'd never thought possible. Truth be told, I wouldn't have thought I'd actually need a mentor up until now, after all the time I spent working alone, but now… well, it's been an eye-opener._

 _You're getting all this just from that pendant you're carrying around? One of these days I'm going to have to meet this Jheselbraum in person, because you've made it sound like she knows just about everything._

"She's adjusted quite swiftly, wouldn't you say?" said Jheselbraum airily. "Humans often react badly to first-time unexpected telepathic communication, but she seems to be taking it in stride. She cares for you a great deal, Gideon."

"I kinda gathered that by the fact that she's still carrying me around like a baby. Um, I hate to change the subject, but when do you think we can move onto predicting the future? It's just that we're still in choppy waters right now, and Wendy could catch up with us at any time… and I guess precognition would be a big help."

"I'm afraid it's not as simple as that: when it comes to psychic training, you can only take one step at a time. Train in too many directions at once, and you risk overloading your mind, even suffering permanent brain damage. You have a great deal of potential strength, but you're not ready to delve into foresight just yet."

Gideon sighed deeply. "I thought you might say that."

"All things happen in their time, Gideon. Don't lose heart just because you can't access the best things immediately. Besides, you still have access to _my_ foresight as long as you're still using this talisman. Now, see if you can expand the link to encompass the rest of the group..."

Gideon paused, as he felt his roving third eye sweep out across the people surrounding him. But just as he was about to begin the link, he stopped, suddenly noticing something rather strange. By now, he could recognize emotions at a glance, reading the texture of feelings like braille and discerning their meaning in the space of a second: he could sense the mood of the crowd almost without trying, and the emotions he was sensing…

"They don't hate me," he whispered.

"Of course not," said Jheselbraum. "You're their saviour after all."

"But that doesn't make any sense! They were there when they heard me confessing; they _know_ I was a con artist. Why would _any_ of them still like me?"

"I think you'll find it's a bit more than "like", Gideon. They adore you."

"But _why?"_

"Because you're their only hope, and against all expectations, you've proved that their trust in you is justified: you've led them to shelter and supplies; you've armed them with devices powerful enough to combat even the monsters roaming the wastelands; you've given them an opportunity to actually take the fight to Bill. And as for your confession, that just gives you a stamp of legitimacy: the idea of a criminal seeking atonement has particular appeal to the lost and forsaken. You'd be amazed at the value of redemption during an end-of-the-world scenario."

"How do _you_ know that?"

"This isn't my first apocalypse," Jheselbraum remarked mysteriously.

"Well, even if that's so…"

Gideon hesitated. "Did you hear that?" he asked. "I… I know there's no sound here, not really, but I could've sworn I heard someone calling for a moment there. I mean, maybe I'm just imagining things, but it actually sounded like Dipper's voice."

Jheselbraum nodded sagely. "A ripple in reality," she explained. "An echo in the fabric of the space-time continuum. Think of it as a temporal signal, inaudible for most but impossible to ignore for those who share the wavelength; to those of us with psychic sensory apparatus, the signal is amplified."

"But what does it mean?"

"Salvation. Or damnation. Perhaps both. I can see all possible futures radiating outwards from this event, and this signal has thrown them into doubt. There's only one certainty at this point."

"And what's that?"

"That someone old and new has returned to the world, and everyone who stands in his way is in danger."

* * *

"People of the wastelands, rejoice! Your absolution has arrived: the Society of the Enduring are here to show you the way!"

The sermon hadn't changed much.

Ever since they'd begun finding refugees in bulk, they'd taken more-or-less the same approach: herd everyone into a single arena, block off all escapes, and let the preacher work his magic. Since Gideon and his gang of dupes had escaped them perhaps a month ago, they'd ran into perhaps four other refugee groups, and all had reacted the same way. There had been screams, of course, and there'd been protests beyond counting, and a few even tried to drive them off. But none could stand against the power of the Society of the Enduring, and after seeing what Wendy did to anyone stupid enough to open fire, surrender was inevitable.

The, the refugees would begin their own transformations, drinking deep of the blessings that the various beings of the Society could offer, until all were ready to begin the journey towards true oblivion. By now, there were almost eighty of them – men, women, children, all monsters now – and the mere sight of them was enough to force a surrender.

Wendy sat back and watched as the preacher harangued the crowd, barely paying attention to any of it. For now, she had plenty of time to plan their next move… but right then, all Wendy could think of was the past.

How long had it been since she'd lost everything?

How long had it been since she'd returned to the Drowning Lands and claimed the blessing that the Acolytes of the Deep had offered?

How long since she'd drank of the saltwater sacrament, and become one of _them?_

By now, it was impossible to tell: perhaps it had really been an eternity, or perhaps it had only been a year. Time meant nothing to human beings anymore. Lord only knew the process of transforming had seemed like forever. The second time she'd imbued herself with a monstrous power, it had seemed even longer, if that was possible.

Those-Who-Dwelled-In-Ruin had warned her that the gifts of monstrosity were not supposed to be blended, and the metamorphosis might very well kill her, but Wendy had been past caring by that stage. Against all expectations, she'd survived that grisly transformation and all transformations that had followed; now, she was a thousand times more powerful than any of them.

But why?

Why did she live on, when so many prospective members of the Society had died in their initiation? Why had she survived, when millions of others had died or been condemned to even _worse_ fates? Why was she still here, with the blood of her family on her hands? Why was she alive, and Dipper dead?

Angrily, Wendy blinked away a few errant tears, scarcely noticing the acrid hiss as they hit the ground. She couldn't afford to think this way, not with so much work on the horizon: she needed to focus on what was important – and not just the simple matter of gathering new recruits. She had revenge to think of.

Gideon was still out there, still alive in spite of all the hateful things he'd done.

One day, she and the Society would find him… and on that day, _they'd take their time._

And then, just as Wendy was beginning to wonder if the preacher was letting the current sermon drag on, something rippled across her senses. For almost a minute, she could only sit there, unable to account for the shiver that had rippled down her spine… and then, as she slowly recovered, she realized that the sensation had somehow reminded her of someone.

For just a moment, she'd thought of Dipper.

 _He's dead,_ she told herself. _The Shapeshifter killed him. You're daydreaming, thinking of someone you've lost. Just get over it: he's never coming back. Dipper is dead._

Sighing, she looked down at the hand-stitched bag sitting in her lap, the sack of provisions she normally kept slung over her shoulder. Yes, Dipper was dead. Here in the bag was all the proof she needed:

Here was his journal, dog-eared and battered but still readable.

Here was his cap, still stained with his blood and punctured in places by the Shapeshifter's teeth.

Dipper was dead, alright. So why did she get the feeling that he'd just tapped her on the shoulder… and why did the thought terrify her beyond all reason?

* * *

There was a pause as the Ruinous Toymaker looked up in confusion, all eight of his eyes clicking softly as they focussed in all directions.

"Did anyone else feel that?" he asked.

For their part, the Rust Thralls standing guard said nothing; most of them could barely think, much less speak. The first generation had been outfitted with voiceboxes, if only so the Toymaker would have someone to talk to every now and again, but Bill had nixed that idea: none of the mechanical soldiers were to speak, and the few specialty models that would be allowed speech were only permitted a few pre-recorded statements – "yes," "no," "you are all going to die" and "enjoy the taste of your dying children, human weakling", for instance. So, the Rust Thralls remained silent except for the whir of servomotors.

As for the raw material on the operating table, it was vocal enough on its own.

"HELP! HEEEEEELP! OH DEAR SWEET LORD HAVE MERCY ON ME, I DON'T WANNA DIE!"

"I'm serious," said the Toymaker, all thirteen of his upper limbs clattering in consternation. "I coulda sworn someone just tapped me on the shoulder. But there's nobody else here, is there? Just you, me and this feller on the table. _You_ didn't feel anything, right?"

"MOMMMYYYYYYYYY!" the raw material screamed.

"You're not being very helpful, you know that?"

This time, the raw material just sobbed helplessly and soiled itself. This tended to happen an awful lot, sadly: most forms of material brought to him began crying almost as soon as they saw the Toymaker's instruments, and the rest broke down once the first incisions were made. One piece of material had gone so far as to offer up its entire family in exchange for being spared from the operating table, which made no sense to the Toymaker. Would any of this material think he could help? Material couldn't be helped: once it arrived on his table, there was nothing that could be done for it except to operate.

The current one was still screaming, and refused to stop – even after it had been jabbed with the cattleprod once or twice. Sighing, the Toymaker extended his seventh limb – now tipped with an adhesive-protecting nozzle – and smoothly glued the material's jaws shut.

Over the muffled gurgling of the Rust Thrall-to-be, the Toymaker thought again on the feeling that had descended upon him. What could have caused that strange sensation? Could it have been another one of Kryptos' pranks, or was this something to do with that strange letter that had arrived in the forge so many months ago? Back then, he'd felt the strangest sense of recognition when he'd read the message; there'd been names that had seemed familiar, as though he'd known them back in the meaningless, memoryless murk from the time before Bill had brought him into existence.

And now there was another name this strange sensation had stirred up. He couldn't remember _all_ of it, but he knew that it started with a D.

Could it be…?

He shook his head, his mechanical components buzzing softly as he did so. He couldn't afford to waste time daydreaming. He had work to do, and Bill wouldn't be happy if he caught the Toymaker slacking off again.

So, unsheathing his flensing blades, his frontmost limbs went to work on the skin of the material, whilst the second set latched onto the subject's eyeballs…

* * *

Mabeland hadn't fared well in Mabel's absence.

Having been upgraded extensively in the days since Weirdmageddon had gone global, it was still stable enough to stand on its own, but the pitched battle at the tower hadn't down the city or the playground any favours. More than half of the city's populace was still licking their wounds, and the rest were still hauling the wreckage away; dozens upon dozens of airships, armoured vehicles and tanks had been left in piles of contorted metal all along the road, almost all of them beyond repair. The factories hidden beneath the saccharine strata of Mabeland were already hard at work churning out replacements, but so far, none of the city's leadership could figure out exactly what they'd ever use them for, now that Mabel was gone.

And everyone left alive in the playground, from the stuffed animal trees to the giraffe bailiffs, now lived in terror of what would happen when Bill finally learned that their prisoner had escaped. But there was precious little they could do about it: by nature, the inhabitants of Mabeland were forbidden from ever leaving the playground, and none of them could transgress the boundaries of Eternal Summer. Plus, even if they could have earned permission to leave, there was that _thing_ currently blocking the portal to the other prison.

All they could do was tidy up and hope that they would have the playground cleared of debris by the time Bill next arrived to check up on his prisoner: with a little luck, Judge Kitty had reasoned, they could claim that Mabel had left for Eternal Summer and never returned. After all, if there was no evidence of a battle and Bill wasn't inclined to look deeper, he'd have no reason to suspect anything. So, from sundown to sunset, all of Mabeland's citizens were consumed with the effort of tidying up.

In the end, it came as something as a surprise when their next visitor turned out not to be Bill at all, but a complete stranger. Tearing through the boundaries between playgrounds in the form of a beam of light, it rippled across the city as a flock of crows, before finally coalescing in the city square in its horrific true shape.

"WHERE IS SHE?" Shifty bellowed.

Perhaps a hundred people around the square looked up, but few of them payed attention for very long: after all, they had important work to do before Bill arrived, and however alarming the intruder was, he clearly wasn't one of the Henchmaniacs and he _definitely_ wasn't Bill. So they shrugged their shoulders in disinterest and went back to their work, trusting that the guards already zeroing in on the interloper would get rid of him.

The Shapeshifter fumed silently. They journey so far had pushed him almost to the limits of his powers, even with Weirdness fuelling them, for he'd had to take _microscopic_ forms just to weave his way through the barriers dividing each playground. Then again, even if it had been the easiest journey in the world, he still wouldn't have been happy: by nature, he wasn't accustomed to be ignored unless he wanted to be, and the sight of an entire city square turning a blind eye to him sent his blood boiling – almost literally.

Shifting his larynx ever so slightly, he amplified his voice a thousandfold until even the most powerful public address systems would have struggled to drown him out, and repeated himself:

" **WHERE IS SHE?!"** he thundered. _**"WHERE IS MABEL?!"**_

Just for the sake of emphasis, tentacles over thirty feet in length lashed the plaza, searing green flame erupted from gaping maws, and diamond-tipped pincers threshed through solid concrete. And for the first time in Mabeland's history, the city was silent… except perhaps for the distant rumble of the playground's inhabitants hurrying towards the plaza to get a good look at what was going on.

Eventually, two figures pushed their way to the front of the growing horde, accompanied by a small retinue of heavily-armed Waffle Guards. The first was a diminutive cat-person with magenta-coloured fur, an oversized head with a judge's wig crudely set atop it, and a set of eyes so massive they seemed perpetually on the verge of bulging out of their sockets. The other was a distressingly familiar-looking humanoid dressed in a backwards-facing cap and a battered white uniform; also, for some reason, there appeared to be an icepack strapped to his belt.

Once again, Shifty was struck by the sense of recognition he felt around place and around its people, almost as if he'd been here before. The first of these two was obviously Judge Kitty Kitty Meow Meow Face-Shwartstein, while the other could only be Dippy Fresh. And looking at the latter of the two, Shifty couldn't help but feel a distinctive ripple of anger, annoyance, and… hatred?

 _What kind of sense does that make? I've only just met him._

"Wiggity Wiggity Wassup, Dudebro?!" the cap-wearing apparition shrieked. "What's the trouble, man?"

 _Okay, it seems I have reasons to hate him after all._

"I'm here for Mabel," Shifty snarled. "Which'd you'd know by now if anyone here had been _listening THE LAST THREE TIMES!"_

"Dude, dude, dude! Be cool, bro! We're all pals here, bro!"

"SHUT UP AND LET ME TALK TO SOMEONE WITH A WORKING BRAIN!"

The judge very carefully pushed Dippy Fresh to one side with a trembling pause. "I'm willing to answer any questions you have," he said tentatively.

"Excellent! Finally, a bit of functional intellect at work. Alright, my questions – in order of appearance: where is Mabel, what defences have you arranged to keep her from escaping, how soon can you get her out of them, how many of you do I have to kill to make this happen, and…" The Shapeshifter's eyes narrowed. "And _why_ has that idiot got an icepack strapped to his belt?"

"That's a very long story, dudebro-"

"I WASN'T ASKING YOU."

The anthropomorphic cat shrugged. "Can't help you there, I'm afraid. She escaped some time ago. Also, she ended up smashing Dippy Fresh here amidships with his own skateboard, hence the icepack."

Shifty took a deep breath, and began slowly counting to the highest number he could reach without breaking concentration – a bad habit picked up from Stanford Pines. "Right," he said at last. "I assume it goes without saying that I'm gonna have to take everything you just said with a huge chunk of salt."

"Dude, no, it really hurt-"

 _35, 36, 37, 38…_

"One more word out of you, and I will not be held responsible for what happens next," Shifty hissed. "Now, you say that Mabel's escaped. I expect proof. Also, I expect to hear some idea of where she went."

"We last saw her heading in the direction of Endless Summer," said the Judge. "But there's something blocking the portal and we haven't been able to follow her."

 _72, 73, 74…_

"How very convenient."

"It's the truth. Look, why would _you_ be interested in Mabel to begin with? I can recognize the Henchmaniacs without even trying, and you're clearly not one of Bill's servants, so what could you possibly want her for?"

"Because-"

And here, Shifty could only flounder helplessly. What _did_ he want Mabel for? What did he want _any_ of Bill's captives for, and why were they all so important to him? The more he thought about it, the more his confusion grew, and the longer he found himself unable to answer, the angrier he became.

 _100, 101, 102…_

"Because it's none of your business!" he yelled at last Now show me to the portal before I do something you'll regret!"

"You know what I don't like about you, man?" Dippy Fresh drawled. "You take everything _way_ too seriously, dudebro. You need to take a chill pill, stay cool, stay slick – like me!"

 _120, 121, 122… oh to hell with diplomacy, I've got better things to do._

"And you what I don't like about _you,_ Mr Fresh?" Shifty purred, not even bothering to hide the malice in his voice. _"Your cap's on backwards."_

And before Dippy Fresh could react, before the vapid cow's eyes behind those gaudy sunglasses could widen in shock, before anyone could separate the two of them, Shifty lunged. In the blink of an eye, his mismatched hands clamped down hard on Dippy Fresh's head and _wrenched_ it a full one hundred and eighty degrees with a rich, meaty _crunch_ of shattering vertebrae.

Suddenly wearing an even more vacuous expression than usual, Dippy Fresh let out a low, confused-sounding death rattle as he regarded his new perspective, clearly wondering why he could suddenly see the label on his collar without help. Then he pitched backwards, landing face down on the paving-stones with the brim of his cap pointed skywards – facing the right way around at last.

"THERE!" The Shapeshifter roared triumphantly. _"FIXED!"_

As one, the crowd backed away, several of them gibbering in blind panic.

"Dippy Fresh!" some whimpered. "He killed Dippy Fresh!"

"Now," Shifty continued, addressing the surrounding congregation, "I think it's time I made things nice and sparkling clear: one of you – preferably the least annoying – will show me the way to this portal to Endless Summer. Every second my demands are not met, one of you will die, and I. Will. Take. My. _Time_. Now, would you like to see how many of you I can kill before I'm forced to start butchering security forces as well, or would you like to be sensible and take me to Mabel?"

"Your prey is gone," hissed a gargantuan voice.

Shifty blinked. "Okay, who said that?" he asked quietly, suddenly aware that the entire city was once again deathly silent.

"Mabel Pines escaped Endless Summer a long time ago, along with the girl called Pacifica. The hunter sent after her did not survive; the blood of the Henchmaniac now flows through my veins, albeit not all of her soul. Her strength is my strength… and I imagine that would make me your equal in combat."

"It's that thing that was blocking the portal!" someone screamed.

"It's here!"

There was a rumble in the distance, as something huge and distinctly viscous began oozing its way between the buildings, until at last the speaker dipped into view: a slug the size of a skyscraper, its oozing blubbery hide the colour of blood, speckled with pulsing black veins.

"What the hell are you?" The Shapeshifter shouted up at it.

"I am Tzimisce."

"Shimmy-see who?"

"I am the Eldest and Greatest of all vampires, and you… are my prey!"

* * *

A/N: Anyone care to translate what Ford was saying?

And of course, up next:

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 **Gsilfts yollwb yzggovh olhg zmw dlm**  
 **Gsv tznv tlvh lm, zmw Xzigvi dzrgh**  
 **Gl iloo gsv wrxv zmw zogvi uzgvh**


	28. Cons And Confabulations

A/N: Aaaargh! Sorry for the lateness of this chapter everyone: I'd meant to get this up two days ago, but a combination of network problems and work has delayed me. In the meantime, thank you to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed - and a special thanks to all of you who've been so patient with me!

Also, this is going to be another of those reference cavalcades, especially towards the end. See how many of them you can get...

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls, Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse and the Cthulhu Mythos do not belong to me. Try to suppress your astonishment, ladies and gentlemen...

* * *

Urihg gl givhkzhh dzh gsv Irtsgvlfh Qfwtv lu Hlfoh; rm kvmrgvmxv, sv srw srh nrtsg zmw hlftsg gl xszrm gsv Yvzhg.  
Hvxlmw dzh gsv Szfmgvi lu gsv Wzip, gsv Svizow lu gsv Mfxovzi Xszlh, sv dsl tznyovh uli gsv uzgv lu srh nzhgvikrvxv; yb srh zigrurxv, sv tzgsvih gsv xsznkrlmh fmwvi gsv Qfwtv'h yzmmvi; yb srh wvxvkgrlm, sv tzgsvih gsv nlmhgvih gl srh ldm xzfhv.

* * *

For what felt like an eternity, the two intruders could only stand in impasse, sizing one another up: Tzimisce glaring down at its opponent with an impossible multitude of eyeballs, its gargantuan bulk overshadowing most of Mabeland's skyline; the Shapeshifter, miniscule by comparison, staring up at the monstrous figure of the vampire-god dominating the horizon overhead. Around them, horror-stricken townsfolk looked on in deathly silence; a few were creeping hesitantly away from the crowd in the hopes of somehow escaping a confrontation with a monster the size of a skyscraper, while the others remained effectively anchored in place, too afraid to move for fear of provoking the two opponents.

Then, the impasse broke: suddenly, the two opponents were in motion, and the crowd was fleeing in all directions.

Sprouting a massive tentacle tipped with a keratin blade the size of a semitrailer, Tzimisce's first swing tore into the nearest tower, slicing through brick, mortar and anyone unfortunate enough to be inside it before erupting through its opposite wall and scything through the air towards the Shapeshifter. But by the time it reached him, Shifty's form had evaporated into a cloud of intangible mist billowing across the town square, leaving the tentacle to pass harmlessly through him – crushing several fleeing pedestrians in the process.

With a foghorn-like growl, Tzimisce lashed out again in a mad attempt to contain the mist, but with the crowd fleeing in all directions and the mist spread too far across the square to be penned in, it only ended up squashing a few dozen citizens – including Judge Kitty, who had barely enough time to mutter "even _less_ dignified than last time, meow" before being viscerally splattered across the pavement.

Clearly not caring in the slightest of collateral damage, the vampire sprouted more tendrils from its bulk and vacuumed the corpses up, absorbing their flesh into its own ponderous form.

Coalescing back into a solid body several yards away, Shifty gathered fresh muscle mass into his arms and reinforced his skeleton, before snatching up a parked car and flinging it at Tzimisce with all his might. Moments later, he was rewarded by a loud _squish_ as one of the vampire-god's eyeballs burst open; immediately, he snatched up two more, launching them through the air like a champion hammer-thrower.

As the cars rained down on it like meteorites, Tzimisce reshaped itself, dividing its bulk into a vast hydra-like mass of tendrils and sending them out in all directions: some ripped huge chunks of masonry from the surrounding buildings and launched them through the air like missiles; others spat colossal plumes of caustic acid, boring holes through solid granite walls; some sprouted buzz-saws of bone and tore clean through neighbouring buildings, trying to bring them down on top of the Shapeshifter; a few even burrowed under the earth in an attempt to impale him from below. But no matter where the attack came from or how well-aimed the missile, Shifty simply wasn't there: one minute, he was a flock of birds, sweeping unarmed through a forest of bladed tendrils; the next, he was a man-o-taur, ducking and weaving around the hailstones with improbable grace and lobbing them right back; then he was an armadillopillar, rolling nimbly down the road at seventy miles an hour, untouched by the acid that rained down around him; a falling skyscraper loomed dangerously overhead, but one herculean flex of effort later, he was a beam of light racing out from under the falling building and clear of the debris field – all in the space of a split-second.

And despite the danger, he couldn't help but silently exalt. Inside his body, apertures were opening wider and faster than ever before; his body was taking on forms he'd never been able to adopt until today, and at a pace that Shifty had never achieved in his entire. The exhilaration of movement and transformation was all but intoxicating, the sense of accomplishment almost euphoric. And as the danger grew, so did his excitement: all around him, cuddly toy people and anthropomorphic animals were crushed by debris, sliced down the middle, dissolved in acid downpours or flattened under falling buildings – but Shifty remained completely untouched.

Roaring in frustration, Tzimisce sprouted a colossal quiver of bone arrows from its lumpen flank and emptied it with a mind-pummelling roar of compressed air, sending over five hundred thousand needle-sharp quills of bone arcing through the air towards Shifty. Once again, though, the Shapeshifter was ready for it: by the time the bone arrows reached their target, he was dissolving into a living tsunami of water cascading across the town square, sweeping away arrows, pedestrians, vehicles, and anyone else that happened to be too close. Racing along the paving stones and pouring down the steps, the Shapeshifter's water form oozed away, as untouchable as the mist but a thousand times faster. Moments later, Shifty changed again, solidifying his body into a flat surface and altering his colouration to match the pattern of the paving stones, until he was almost indistinguishable from the ground beneath the fleeing citizens' feet.

For several seconds, Shifty remained hidden, mind racing as he considered his next mood: his camouflage was perfect for the moment, but he couldn't stay like this forever – not unless he actually wanted to be crushed under this Tzimisce creature's bulk when it decided to investigate the situation close-up; he couldn't keep on evading, for transforming into water or mist was a significant drain on his stamina, and after all the energy he'd expended just travelling into this infuriating world, he couldn't afford to waste any more; in all probability, he couldn't run either – for one thing, his opponent might very well be able to follow, and for another, he'd no idea what the hell he was supposed to do next. Perhaps, with a little luck, his opponent would know where Mabel Pines had gone. Question was, how could he hope to tackle the vampire god in direct combat? How could he hope to fight such a thing, much less convince it to talk? Even with all the forms Shifty had learned from Journal 3, the odds were stacked against him, for so few of those bodies were anywhere near Tzimisce's size or strength. Maybe his rock-monster form would be strong enough to grapple with it up close, but even that was a bit of a gamble because it simply wasn't big enough to-

 _No, no. You're still thinking like an ordinary pre-Weirdmageddon shapeshifter. You can fuel yourself with Weirdness now. Think creatively. Think BIG._

And with that, Shifty was himself again – and suddenly in motion.

Summoning up as much mass as he could possibly gather, he flung himself at Tzimisce, and as he moved, he _changed:_ his body expanded upwards, growing taller and taller as he drew in more mass, swatting dozens of fleeing citizens aside as he charged at the distant figure of the vampire god – and then crushing them under his ballooning feet as he grew steadily taller; muscles rippled across his limbs, endowing him with titanic physical strength; his flesh coated itself in a layer of rocky exoskeleton denser and stronger than any human armour; traits borrowed from countless different shapes coursed into his newly-chosen form, empowering him beyond any form he'd taken before.

By the time he'd crossed the plaza separating the two of them, he'd grown from a mere seven feet tall to over four hundred, and his body was a wild patchwork of different forms: the gigantic frame of Steve, the impenetrable skin of the rock-monster, the neurotoxin-envenomed claws of the Gremlobin, the diamond-tipped jaws of the armadillopillar, the whiplash tongue of the three-eyed toad, the armoured, mallet-like skull of the knucklehead, and countless others. And he was still adding new traits to his collaged body when he slammed headlong into Tzimisce at high speed.

The force of the impact sent the vampire-god's sluglike body lurching away with all the grace and agility of a zeppelin tethered to a runaway freight train, ploughing sidelong into one of the few surviving buildings and sending several hundred thousand tons of rubble crashing down on any citizens unfortunate enough to be within range. Cackling madly, Shifty pummelled his opponent's undefended flanks with his enormous stone fists, pulverizing bone, rupturing flesh, sending enormous gouts of boiling vampire blood fountaining down on the skyline and slowly propelling it even further across the increasingly ruined city.

Unfortunately, the advantage was only temporary: as it slid awkwardly away, a massive set of spider legs erupted from Tzimisce's molten flesh and slammed into the ground, anchoring it in place. Recovering instantly, its body began to heal at an impossible rate, shattered bones and shredded flesh re-knitting itself at an impossible rate; by the time Shifty swung his fist around for another left cross, Tzimisce's body was coated with an exoskeleton stronger than titanium, and a massive set of fanged jaws were zeroing in on Shifty's face. Darting out of the way, he grabbed the snapping jaws just before they could snap shut and began forcing them apart, intent on ripping the gigantic bastard's mouth off – but no sooner had he begun, another jagged-toothed maw rocketed in from the size and bit down hard on Shifty's left shoulder, tearing through the thick hide like paper.

"You are an insect," Tzimisce intoned from a thousand hissing mouths. "A flea taking up arms against a god. You cannot stop me."

With an almighty yowl of pain, Shifty _wrenched_ himself free of the monster's jaws, spraying green blood across the surrounding ruins. Panting, he began the awkward process of regenerating as quickly as possible, edging around Tzimisce like a boxer on the defensive as he did so.

"You… talk too much," he puffed. "Now, Zitmice-"

" _Tzimisce."_

"Right. Shimmy-see-somethingorother. Now, do you feel like telling me where I can find Mabel, or does this have to get even nastier?"

"She is beyond your reach, Shapeshifter. Concentrate on the battle or die."

"Whatever you say, Slimvice."

"It's _Tzimisce,"_ the vampire hissed. "The Eldest and Greatest of all vampires, the last of the Antediluvians, the victor of the Crucible of God, the-"

"You're really invested in your own hype, you know that? I thought someone with a name like Slickwisp would've learned to take things a little less seriously."

And as Tzimisce was busy fuming with rage, Shifty lashed out with an arm that was already dissolving into a bouquet with dagger-tipped tendrils, each one tipped with every single kind of venom he'd encountered in his short-but-colourful life. But before he could make a jab at what little of Tzimisce's exposed tissues remained, another gout of acid sent Shifty rearing back, clutching his wounded limbs and struggling to regenerate.

"I was told that this would be an arduous battle... but you've proved an annoyance at best."

Another quiver of arrows exploded from Tzimisce's bulk, pincushioning Shifty with dozens of needle-sharp quills. Most couldn't penetrate his hide, but a lucky few found the weak points in his armour where the rock-monster body became something else, and sank deep into his unprotected flesh; and while most were little more than paper cuts, the sheer volume of them was more than enough to slow him down as he struggled to force them free.

"You bleed and weaken just as any other mortal would."

Tzimisce lunged forward, a hundred thousand new extremities bursting free of his body. This time, Shifty didn't even bother dodging: a split-second glimpse in the direction of the oncoming attack revealed that none of them were meant to simply hurt; these were anchors, hooks, grapnels – all of them meant to reel Shifty in for the kill. So once again, he dissolved into a living fogbank; unfortunately, he could only maintain his shape for barely a few seconds before being forced to revert.

"Your strength is finite. Soon, you will collapse and I will be free to drink my fill."

Groaning in exhaustion, Shifty conjured a pair of gigantic wings from his heaving shoulders and tried desperately to fly away before the next attack hit home, but another barrage of organic grappling hooks shot out and latched onto his leg, leaving him anchored to the ground by the vampire's immense weight.

"You prove too limited to ever be a credible opponent," Tzimisce chortled. "You have only one true body, one life to spare. But I? _I am limitless."_

The vampire god's body writhed with activity, his flesh dividing and erupting into a colossal mass of pterodactyl-sized birds that swarmed towards Shifty. For almost a full-minute, they pecked and tore at every inch of exposed tissue they could reach, whittling away at his stamina even as the rest of Tzimisce's body began slowly reeling Shifty in… and as it did so, thousands upon thousands of lamprey-like suckers appeared along its body, opening wide in preparation for a feast.

"This is the end, Shapeshifter. Surrender your physical form and experience true godhood as part of my totality. _Be of me."_

No longer listening, Shifty once again fell back on his instincts just as he had in the cryotube, and began taking on any form that might help him escape, no matter how unlikely: over the course of the next ten seconds, he was the armadillopillar, a gnome, the Hide-Behind, Mabel, Ford, Soos and a hundred different fusions of each, but no matter what form he took or how quickly he transformed, Tzimisce refused to let go. Mist and water were no longer possible – exhaustion had cut off that avenue for escape – so all he could do was continue shifting.

"As long as you still live, I feel you should know that your name is ridiculous. What kind of self-respecting shapeshifter – vampire, mage, werewolf or fae – would _ever_ possess a name like D-"

And in that moment, Shifty's body went through one last random change, warping, twisting and finally erupting into an anthropomorphic mass of fire. And to his amazement, the flames burned clean through the tentacles holding him, reducing the oozing red and black flesh to cooked meat and melting almost thirty feet of it to sizzling juices. Immediately, Tzimisce let out a shriek of pain and terror loud enough to burst every eardrum left in the city, and recoiled at whiplash speed.

Realizing his advantage, Shifty surged forward, reshaping his body into comet-like mass of flames as he went on the attack: his first dive-bomb melted Tzimisce's undefended spider legs and burned clean through his exoskeleton; the second incinerated a dozen flailing limbs and seared through the flesh beneath it, leaving a hole that could have comfortably accommodated a freight train; the third fried Tzmisce so thoroughly that a stadium-sized chunk of bubbling meat sloughed off its body and landed with a deafening _squish_ on the ruined roadway below.

"Don't like fire, do ya?" Shifty cackled, having well and truly recovered his bravado. "Guess your little hype-spiel didn't cover that, Shingles."

"It's TZIMISCE!" the vampire thundered, clutching its wounded limbs.

"You wanna consider a name change? BBQ, maybe, or perhaps Medium-Rare, or Extra-Crispy. Oh, or Flambé!"

"If I had my entire body with me, little Shapeshifter-"

"Well, you don't. And that's all that matters right now, Mr Char-Grilled. Now, tell me where Mabel is, or-"

But before Shifty could so much as advance on Tzimisce, the vampire-god quivered violently, and suddenly its flesh warped and melted into a living mass of blood; for a split-second, it stood there, oozing and undulating, almost as if considering what to do next. But then the moment passed, and the enormous red expanse tsunami'd away, roaring down the streets of Mabeland at high speed, washing away people, vehicles and small buildings as it cascaded to freedom.

Four whole minutes went by in silence as Shifty slowly recovered from his exertions, lowering himself to the ground, returning to his true form, and slowly regenerating what few damaged tissues remained. Then, once he was absolutely sure that Tzimisce wasn't planning a sneak attack, he slumped forward and took in the deepest breath of his short-but-colourful life.

"That… was interesting," he panted.

"I'll say."

Shifty sat bolt-upright, and immediately found himself face to face with the least-likely inhabitant of Mabeland yet.

"Who the hell are _you?"_ he demanded.

"Most mortals call me Nyarlathotep," said the apparition. "But you can call me Mr Carter. Impressive fight back there, by the way: adaptability, resourcefulness, cunning, ruthlessness, and even a little combat banter – yes, I think you'll serve my purposes admirably for the time being. Tzimisce will probably be a little sore about being bested by the new kid on the block, but I've got a very tasty consolation prize lined up for him, so you've nothing to fear from him anymore."

" _Your_ purposes? Was this fight _your_ doing?"

"Well, that was my implication, yes."

Shifty took a deep breath. "You feel like telling me why, or am I going to have to tenderize the answers out of you?"

Nyarlathotep/Mr Carter grinned. "I'd like to see you try," he said. "I really would."

Twisting his mandibles into a grin of his own, Shifty transformed his arm into a sledgehammer of moulded bone and steel, and brought it crashing down on Nyarlathotep's skull – or at least, he would have, if the strangely-dressed figure hadn't reached up and caught the hammer with one hand.

"I wouldn't recommend it, though," he said cheekily.

Laughing softly to himself, Nyarlathotep casually swatted Shifty aside, sending him tumbling helplessly over the road and clean through a nearby shop window. By the time he'd recovered enough to prise his head out of the cash register, the crimson-coated monster was once again standing over him.

"To answer your question," he continued. "I wanted a precise test of your capabilities, to learn if you were truly worthy of my time and sponsorship. It seems you've passed with flying colours, and you're ready to proceed… and now that we've gotten the usual dominance games and machismo-fuelled posturing out of the way, I think it's time you received your prize. You wanted to know the exact location of Mabel Pines, yes?"

Shifty, who was currently hauling himself free of a ruined shelving unit, could only blink in astonishment. "…yes," he admitted.

"Well then, I can't tell you where she _is_ at present, as she's moving around rather a lot… but I _can_ tell you where she's going – her and all the other members of the Zodiac. Yes, your prey is bound for the city of Cipheropolis!"

"Cipher-what?"

"Cipheropolis, at the very epicentre of the Gardens of Torments, upon the shores of the Nightmare Coast. Sooner or later, all the refuges, bandit gangs, wasteland cults and other dispossessed scum who haven't been lucky enough to have been funnelled into a playground end up in Cipheropolis. Think of it as a safari park where humans can live in ancestral squalor with as little interference as possible – until someone wants a head on their wall, of course. Or maybe it's a snowglobe that Bill Cipher can look in on every now and again and shake things up if he thinks it's getting too placid for his tastes. You'll fit right in, Shifty: all you'll have to do is sit tight, wait for a few days, and avoid killing too many people."

"…that's all?" said Shifty.

"Exactly that."

"But how will I know where to wait? It's an entire city!"

Nyarlathotep smirked, and drew a notepad and pen from the pocket of his coat. "There's an address you'll be obliged to look out for: the Rallying Flag Hotel, on the corner of Mictlan Street and Desolation Boulevard, just across from Camp Cocytus. Wait there, and your prey will come to you."

"…but why are you helping me? Is this another test?"

" _Everything_ is a test, little Shoggoth. Now run along: your destiny awaits! Yes, Cipheropolis is where you will meet your destiny…"

* * *

"Oh Tzimisce? Are you down here?"

"Ow."

"Haha. I guessed as much. You did very well out there: you fought hard, you pushed Dipper to his limits, and you did so without killing him."

"Not for lack of trying. If Rotschreck had not set in, I would have killed him. Rest assured, when I am able to bring in my main body, I will take great delight in crushing him."

"Not while he's still useful to me, you won't."

"I recall you promising me an opportunity to feast upon the gods of the wider universe. I hope you intend to uphold your end of the bargain, or else I doubt your newest pawn will survive long enough to reach this "Cipheropolis," _trickster."_

"Oh ye of overwhelming faith. You'll get what you want… in time. First, I need to ensure that your access to the multiverse won't be interrupted: after all, it'd be a very poor hunt if you had only one reality to prey upon."

"Very well. In the meantime, this body requires a great deal of vitae, and these childish constructs are insufficient for my needs. If you have need of me, I will be replenishing my mass in the City of the Dead."

"Good to hear. Nice doing business with you. Oh, and Tzimisce?"

"What is it now, Nyarlathotep?"

" _ **Never talk to me that way again."**_

* * *

Deep in the shadow of a dimension gone mad, the Weaver's corporeal avatar sat in silence, surveying the bloated dominion of Bill Cipher from well beyond its boundaries – as had been agreed upon. Around her, the seemingly-infinite spirits of her retinue gathered like nobles at court, enraptured by the beauty of the Onesong as it rippled through their eerily-symmetrical ranks; pattern spiders crawled across the void in improbably intricate patterns, erasing any stray tendrils of Weirdness that might emanate from the dimension and removing any sings of imperfection from the Weaver's presence.

And just behind the Weaver's dais of sculpted space-time, a tiny arachnid figure had been nailed to a floating marble wall, every single limb transfixed by a needle honed to the thickness of an atom. Occasionally, the figure would whimper and try to change back into human form, but the corrections made to her body had fully taken hold by now: Darlene's powers of transformation were anathema to the Weaver's vision of a perfect, unchanging world, and her spirit host had been very prompt in ensuring that this insult to their mistress's glory was well and truly erased; the realm of human interaction had been forever denied to her, leaving her nothing more than a giant spider.

After perhaps seventy-two hours spent enduring transfixion in silence, Darlene finally let out a tortured gasp of "Please… just let me die…"

But the Weaver only scoffed and remarked, DEATH IS NO LONGER PERMITTED IN MY PRESENCE, CHILD. I HAVE BLESSED YOU WITH IMMUTABILITY, AND GRANTED YOU THE GLORY OF STASIS. NOW, YOU ARE BEYOND DEATH. REJOICE IN THE SANCTITY OF CALCIFICATION, ACCEPT MY LOVE FOR YOU, AND I WILL ALLOW YOU TO SERVE ME WITHOUT PAIN.

"I'd drink to that, but I think I left the good booze at home," said a cheery voice from somewhere below her.

As one, all the members of the Weaver's court turned in the direction of the voice, and saw a familiar figure striding across the extradimensional nothingness towards them. As expected, he was still dressed in his magnificent crimson coat, but this time he was carrying an enormous burlap sack over one shoulder – a sack that writhed and thrashed with human captives imprisoned in non-Euclidean space.

AH. NYARLATHOTEP. YOU HAVE FOUND SOMEONE, THEN?

"One very particular someone," said the Outer God with a wink. "I looked long and hard for this candidates for Clarification, and I think you'll find him an ideal Drone."

LET ME BE THE JUDGE OF THAT.

"As you wish…"

And with that, Nyarlathotep up-ended the sack, sending the contents tumbling out across extradimensional space towards the Weaver's court, allowing the mighty celestial spirit an unhindered view of the candidate for dronehood.

His clothes were tattered, his features discoloured with bruises, his eyes were wide with fear, and blood was gushing merrily from a burst lip. And yet his shoes were still polished, his collar buttoned, his rumpled tie still fastened; even his hair was still combed, though it clearly hadn't been cleaned or cut for several months. _And,_ despite the look of deer-in-the-headlights terror in those gaping eyes, a faintly-vacuous smile remained stamped on the candidate's face, never once budging even as the Weaver's galaxy-piercing eyes loomed ever closer.

"Say something," Nyarlathotep advised, helpfully prodding him in the back with a daggerlike fingernail. "Tell us a little bit about yourself, little man."

"I like bread," the candidate replied blandly.

There was an astonished pause.

HE'S **PERFECT** , said the Weaver at last, unable to disguise the utter delight in her non-voice.

"I knew he'd be just the thing to cheer you up. I mean, the fact that he's been able to get this close to you without devolving into a gibbering lunatic is evidence enough that he'd be the ideal drone."

MORE THAN JUST A DRONE. A _TRUE_ PARAGON AMONG MY PERFECT ONES, ABLE TO SERVE IN ALL NECESSARY FIELDS: WARRIOR, AMBASSADOR, BUILDER AND SERVER HUB. HE SHALL BE MY VOICE IN BILL CIPHER'S WORLD… AND AS LONG AS YOUR INTERESTS COINCIDE WITH MINE, HE SHALL AID YOU AS WE AGREED.

"Excellent! So, when can this splendid soldier be incorporated into your ranks?"

I HAVE ALREADY BEEN SELECTING APPROPRIATE SPIRITS WITH WHICH HE CAN BE MERGED, AND HIS COCOON CAN BE READIED AT A MOMENT'S NOTICE. THE CLARIFICATION CAN BEGIN IMMEDIATELY.

And no sooner had Nyarlathotep stepped away from his captive's trembling form, several hundred thousand glittering spider-spirits descended upon the candidate, layering him in a metallic carpet of semi-ethereal bodies as they went about preparing him for spiritual symbiosis: one by one, they covered his face, his eyes, his gaping mouth, until not a single part of him remained visible. Then they began spinning long threads of glistening spirit-stuff, each strand interlinking with its neighbour to form a growing mass of silk, until the helpless candidate was almost hidden hidden beneath the layers of a densely-woven cocoon; the spiders allowed one corner of it open, just long enough for the possessing spirit to be funnelled into the growing capsule, before finally closing it – trapping both the candidate and his symbiotic partner inside. From within, there came the muffled sound of the candidate screaming in that oddly toneless, effortlessly voice; this in turn, was slightly drowned-out by the whir of the spirit next to him as the spiders slowly disassembled it and went about integrating the component with those of the candidate – fusing them on a level that Bill Cipher himself would not have thought possible.

Then, there was silence.

Nyarlathotep eyed the cocoon with undisguised amusement. "Something tells me he's going to be a lot happier as a drone," he remarked idly.

HAPPINESS IS IRRELEVANT. ORDER IS ALL THAT MATTERS.

"You're nothing if not consistent."

YOU SAID YOU WOULD BE PREPARED TO OFFER ME ACCESS TO ALL THE WORLDS ACCESSIBLE BY THIS CROSSROADS DIMENSION.

"I will, once my work here is complete and no later than that. It's best to think of this as an _investment:_ you, like your fellow stakeholders, will have to wait for the payoff."

"FELLOW STAKEHOLDERS." YOU TRY TO DELAY THE ORIGINAL POINT WITH CORPORATE TERMINOLOGY. QUITE A FEAT CONSIDERING THAT I INVENTED THE CONCEPT OF A CORPORATION IN MY HOME DIMENSION… AND IT BECOMES CLEAR YOU ARE FORMING AN ALLIANCE. WHO ELSE IS INCLUDED IN THIS CONSORTIUM?

"Oh, you'll have to wait and see."

YOU ARE ADDING ADDITIONAL CLAUSES TO OUR AGREEMENT, AND YOU ARE DELIBERATELY DELAYING THE SO-CALLED PAYOFF. I SUSPECT YOU ARE TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE DELAY IN ORDER TO FURTHER YOUR OWN ENDS.

"Do you, indeed?"

I HAVE ENCOUNTERED EVIDENCE TO SUGGEST THAT YOU SERVE THE NEEDS OF ANOTHER INTERLOPER IN THIS DIMENSION, THE AXOLOTL. MY SERVANTS AND I HAVE INTERCEPTED CODED TRANSMISSIONS CONVEYED BETWEEN THIS WORLD AND OTHERS. MY VISION HAS TRACED YOUR FOOTSTEPS ACROSS THIS REALITY, CONNECTING BILL CIPHER'S PLAYTHINGS. LOGIC DICTATES YOU ARE FORMING MULTIPLE TEAMS OF INSURGENTS IN ORDER TO UNDERMINE BILL'S RULE OF THIS DIMENSION, PRESUMABLY AT THE AXOLOTL'S BEHEST.

"And?

FROM WHAT LITTLE I HAVE LEARNED OF THIS AXOLOTL, I DOUBT HE WOULD APPROVE OF YOU RECRUITING ME.

"Get to the point."

WHOSE AGENDA DO YOU REALLY SERVE, NYARLATHOTEP?

"That's easily answered: _**my own.**_ But as for what I intend to do with all the gods and devil once I've gathered them , well, that's a surprise I'll leave for another day. Besides, I think your newest Perfect One is almost ready…"

There was a rumbling from the cocoon; as one, the Weaver's spirit host rushed to attend it as metamorphic tremors rippled up and down its bulk, coordinated perfectly by the Onesong rippling up and down the Pattern Web. Inside the cocoon, the Clarification was almost complete, the essence of the spirit completely merged with the candidate's body, and spider spirits were already rushing to anchor the fusion in place as the transformation came to end. Then at last, the fused mass of glittering strands split in two, and the completed Perfect One stepped free.

To the casual observer, he hadn't changed much. His clothes had been repaired and ironed, the dirt had been scrubbed from his hands, and all the cuts and bruises on his face had simply vanished; other than that, he appeared almost completely identical to his pre-Clarification self. It would have taken a very sharp eye for detail to notice just how much he'd really changed, but only an expert would have realized the true nature of the transformation he'd just undergone.

If anything, he looked _more_ like himself than before: the hairline seemed a little straighter, the clothes a little more starched, his smile a little more fixed than before. As he stepped into the light and more details became apparent, the uncannier he appeared. His features seemed a little _too_ symmetrical to be real, every aspect of him perfectly balanced in every way; his skin was entirely unblemished, so smooth it seemed almost like porcelain; most unusually of all, the random particles of dust that occasionally swept across the void didn't seem to touch him. In fact, a closer look would have revealed that his skin was actively repelling dirt and dust. Most tellingly of all, the fear was gone from his eyes, replaced with an unearthly look of self-assurance.

SPEAK, PERFECT ONE. WHO IS YOUR MASTER, AND WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE?

"Hi everyone," said the Drone. "I'm Tad Strange, servitor of the Weaver, and purging inefficient elements is my game."

* * *

Somewhere across the multiverse, on a plane of reality far too normal to belong to Bill Cipher, a phone was ringing in an almost-empty house… and not too far away, a weary, slurring voice was awkwardly piecing together a reply.

"Arrrgh. Morty, go get that… Morty? _Morty?_ MORTY?! ANSWER THE FUCKING PHONE! _MORTY!"_

For a moment, the only sound that could be heard was that of the phone insistently trilling away. Then, comprehension finally dawned.

"Oh right, he's at school. Asshole. Okay, okay, okay, I'll get it… Urrrrp. Goddammit. Hmmgrh."

There was a pause, and then every neighbour in earshot was regaled by the distinctive bangs and thuds of an extremely drunk human being stomping, tripping, stumbling and falling his way towards a phone.

"Ow! Why'd you leave the phone all the way over here, you pricks? Dammit. You should have learned my habits by now! Urrgh. God, n-n-nobody gets what it's like to be drunk, stoned and hungover at the same time. They know what it's like to get drunk, but none of them will meet me halfway when it comes to getting high. Arrgh. Should have – _urrrp_ – put another teleporter down there a long time ago…"

Several minutes later, the ringing finally ground to a halt.

"Hello, Smith residence. Gotta warn you, if this is another telemarketer, I'm gonna hunt you down and shoot you in the dick with a liquefaction cannon just like I did to the last four of you guys."

"Rick Sanchez, you old bastard, _what_ is _up?"_

"Oh hey, Nyarlathotep! Good to hear from you, my man! How's the family? How's the old – urrrp – Blind Idiot God daddy been treatin' ya?"

"Well he's still asleep, the piper and the drummer are still keeping him nice and dozy… for now. And how have you been going?"

"Truth be told, I was just thinking of giving you a call, 'cuz things have been getting unbelievably goddamn dull in this neck of the woods now that Jerry's gotten his balls out of his purse. I-I-I really need a pick me-up, and I don't think my usual blend of Lyrium and Jet is gonna do it for me this time. I'm thinking I need Freslin, Seagrass of R'lyeh, some Red Honey, a bit of Slab, maybe a few buckets of Shub-Niggurath's erogenous secretions if you can spare 'em. Oh, and I gotta have some Dreamshit; none of the cheap stuff cut with bath salts, okay? I'm talking pure Slake-Moth excrement, preferably from ones who've been feeding off pornstars."

"You'd better believe I've got all of that and more, old buddy. I've even got some Colour Out Of Space, just for you – _properly_ crystalized, so you can actually smoke it this time around, no injections required! But in the meantime, something very interesting's come up – something with absolutely _unprecedented_ opportunities for fun, adventure, experimentation, and a good dose of eldritch methamphetamine straight from Yuggoth!"

"Alrighty then, Gnarly, you got my attention. Where's the fun?"

"A little-known dimension outside the Central Finite Curve, currently experiencing a full-blown apocalypse of the extradimensional incursion: some cosmic party animal by the name of Bill Cipher has taken the place over and subverted local reality on an unprecedented scale, and might be intending to spread further."

"Hmm. Bill Cipher… where have I heard that name before? Argh, too early in the morning for a walk down memory lane. Eh, whatever. Anyway, if it's reality-subverting, there's definitely some good research to be done there. I don't have to do anything stupid and heroic once I'm there, though, right?"

"Nah, man: you'd be obliged to keep Bill from hot-footing it, but as long as you don't actually get my team on the inside killed, you can do whatever the hell you want. Besides, the heroics are already being taken care of, and not just by the guys on the inside. I'm putting together a team on the outside – Elizabeth Comstock, Q, Emma Smith, Rehab Alma and Shana the Moonchild from the Redemption 'Verses, the Lutece twins, Coin, the Ellimist, the Doctor-"

"The Doctor? _Jesus._ Tell me you at least got one of the halfway decent incarnations like 7 or 12; there's not enough booze in the multiverse to help me deal with 10's incessant sobbing."

"I got _all_ of them, Rick."

"…shit. This is serious, isn't it?"

"That's why I called you, my friend. I knew you'd have the most fun out of all this… and what with some of the sourpusses I've got lining up out there, we reallyneed some more fun on the team. Jessica Sorrow's so emo it makes me wanna puke, Dr Manhattan wouldn't know a joke if it crawled up his sphincter and died, Alma Wade was all gloom and doom even before she reformed, Einstein couldn't crack a smile if all his lifespans depended on it, John Murdoch's gone all messiah, and Shana lost her sense of humour the day she ended up being fused with a living moon-"

"And Coin and Emma are too young for most of the jokes. Pain in the ass, I know."

"You see why we need some good old-fashioned mad-science fun on the team, don't you?"

"Preachin' to the choir, pal. Alright, I'm in: I could do with a vacation. Besides, Q _and_ the Lutece twins? Not much, but it sounds like we've already got a few drinking buddies ready for a _really_ good afterparty."

"If we can talk Einstein into bringing Crichton along for the ride, sure."

"Eh, good luck with that."

"Anyway, I'm sending you the coordinates; I'll meet you outside the dimensional boundaries, just as soon as I've finished making calls. Have fun!"

"Will do. See you there, Gnarly…"

"Oh, and one more thing that might make this party even better: there's an old friend residing in the afflicted dimension who is just _dying_ to see you again."

"…who?"

And somewhere on the far end of reality, Nyarlathotep smiled, his mouth unfolding into a grin that encompassed his entire body, unearthly masses of razor-sharp teeth sprouting from all corners of his infinitely-variable avatar.

"Stanford Pines," he said gleefully.

"…WHAT THE FU-"

"Bye, Rick!"

* * *

A/N: How many of Rick and Nyarlathotep's references did you spot?

Up next - a fateful decision is made, and terrible sacrifices are enacted. Or, if you prefer...

Tlwsllw (lu z hlig) rh hgroo yvrmt luuvivw  
Ru blf kzb gsv kirxv gszg szh yvvm kiluuvivw  
Gsvb ylgs szev kldvih, yfg mlg zoo  
Hvou-olzgsrmt xlnvgs yvuliv z uzoo


	29. A Pale Horse

A/N: Ladies and gentlemen, I'd sincerely hoped to finish this chapter sooner, but real life got in the way - real life and preparation for hospital visits. Technically, said hospital visit is still getting in the way, given that I'm posting this a lot later in the day (or earlier, depending on the time zone) than I intended, but we'll leave it at that. Thank you to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed!

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine, and neither are any of the texts that Ford references.

 **Also, this is another chapter without opening or ending riddles: we've got more than enough codes and riddles in the main body of the chapter, easily recognized by the bold text. See how many of them you can translate!**

* * *

How many times had they wished?

How many powers had they acquired? Ford recognized clairvoyance, levitation, teleportation, gravity inversion, superhuman strength, telekinesis, molecular manipulation, and a host of others, but he'd never actually counted.

Just how much Weirdness had they absorbed?

By now, it was impossible to tell: they'd both made so many requests for so many frivolous things they'd just about lost count, most of them fairly equal in Weirdness value (apart from the time that Stan had decided to wish for a portable toilet and some soft toilet paper). For good measure, neither of them were in any condition to look back on the events of the last few days with anything other than a headache. As if all the bewildering mutations and frankly disturbing mental maladies weren't bad enough, the sheer quantity of Weirdness they'd absorbed had left them effectively poleaxed with exhaustion.

In the wake of the last two wishes, Stan and Ford were left so worn-out that the only thing they could do was collapse. By that time, they had an improvised bedroom arranged in the southeast chamber, complete with proper beds wished for at great expense, but neither of them had the energy to travel that far; all they could do was flop backwards onto the marble and lie there, too weary to budge another inch. And there they stayed for the next five hours, slumped on the floor just out of wishing range, too bushed to do anything other than stare up at the mural of Icarus and wonder what the hell they were going to do next.

Stan was the first to break the silence.

"Ford?"

"Yes, Stanley?"

"Do you think it would have worked?"

"Do I think _what_ would have worked? **Listen to the cadenza of dreams, the broiling aria of Somnus. The coda heralds the end of all things.** "

Stan eyed Ford strangely, but by now he was almost used to the unearthly, deep-voiced mutterings and random explosions of gibberish.

"The Stan-O-War," he explained. "Our big plan to go sailing around the world for treasure and babes, everything we'd planned to do before… before that visit to the principal's office. Would any of it have worked? I mean, everything sounds like it'll all work out when you're a teenager – you know, before you've had time to grow up and get run over by the real world, but… you think we ever had a chance to make the plan work? Would we have even gotten that old boat seaworthy, taken it on the voyage of a lifetime, or would we have made a mess of it and have been forced to give up, face reality and get day jobs? Was it even worth the effort, or was it all just a waste of time?"

Ford thought carefully. For the moment, he still had a firm enough grasp of his own memories to know what Stan was talking about, but it still took a while to recognize that he'd ever had a place in them… and god only knew it was only going to get even trickier as the game carried on.

"Infinite worlds offer infinite possibilities," he said at last. **"Seramthgin od os tub ...nwo rieht fo sdlrow ot htrib evig smaerd dna sepoh."**

"Yeah, I didn't understand any of that."

" **I CAN TASTE DREAMS.** Oh, I beg your pardon. Ahem, I saw many parallel universes during my time on the other side of the portal… places where the sun set forever on a world of vampires, worlds where dinosaurs ruled instead of humans, iterations of the 20th century where magic and not science won the Second World War, **zklxzobkgrx svoohxzkvh dsviv gsv dszov-nloofhx-tlwh ziv uivv uiln gsv Wivznrmt Kirhlm zmw zoo gsv ortsgh rm gsv hprvh szev yvvm wvelfivw** … sorry. Anyway, with all the worlds I've witnessed, it's possible that there's one world out there where our mad scheme paid off, where we could have made the Stan-O-War work and gone travelling together."

"In other words, your guess is as good as mine."

"Anything's possible. Perhaps, in a happier world, things really could have been different."

"I'd have thought you'd have been able to see some of those other worlds for yourself with that new sight of yours."

Ford winced. "There's limits to what I can clearly see," he lied. "The other dimensions are still beyond my sight. **The mists part only at the sacrifice of innocence and humanity. Ls tlw, Hgzmovb, sld xzm R gvoo blf gsv gsrmth R'ev hvvm drgslfg yivzprmt blfi svzig?"**

"Right, I'm sure…"

 _Goddammit, Stanley, you can always tell when I'm lying. Even when I'm halfway transformed into a Henchmaniac and talking nonsense, there's no keeping secrets from you._

"Speaking of mad schemes," Stanley continued, somewhat hesitantly, "Do you think… given a bit of time and a lot of luck, I'd have been able to make up for ruining your chances of getting into West Coast Tech?"

"…you already _have_ , Stanley."

Despite having almost eight feet of space between them, Ford had the distinct impression that Stan was trying valiantly not to smile.

"I meant to _dad._ Do you ever think I'd have been able to make up for wrecking his big chance of getting out of Glass Shard Beach? I know the odds were against me, but do you think that if I'd ever been able to strike it rich… well, would mom and dad have taken me back? Would they have forgiven me, or would they have still been angry with me and turned me down?"

"Mom was never angry with you to begin with, Stanley."

"…she wasn't?"

"Of course not! All she would talk about for every day you were gone was how much she missed you, her little "free spirit." She loved you, Stanley, and I don't think even your biggest screw-ups could have possibly changed that."

"Well, she _said_ that at the funeral… but I thought that was just the kind of thing estranged family members would say after enough time spent apart. Plus, she was a pathological liar," he added. "I mean, she didn't even say anything when dad threw me out of the house!"

"Dad had that effect on people," said Ford sadly. "I think in the end, all three of us were too scared to say no to him. And to be honest, I don't think he was ever expecting to see you again: demanding that you make him a fortune was just dad's way of getting rid of you without having to get the police involved. Even if you had managed to bring him a million dollars in a briefcase the next day, I doubt he'd have taken a cent of it, least of all after he'd gone to all the trouble of writing you off as a failure."

Stan sighed. "I hate to say it, but I guess I knew the answer already. Self-Loathing was talking about that back in the museum. But… do you think he… do you think there was ever a chance dad might have been proud of me? At _any_ point?"

Ford bit his lip. "I don't know," he admitted.

"Well, he was proudest of you, so…"

"Double nothing is still nothing."

"...I'm sorry, what?"

"Truth be told, I don't think dad was proud of anyone or anything, Stanley. He admired things that might one day benefit him; that was the only thing he was really impressed with."

"When did you figure this out?"

"Around the time he started asking for money, and refused to accept anything I could legally lend him. Apparently the prospect of stealing grant money – _highly traceable_ grant money – and getting raked over the coals by the IRS was better than accepting a handout from his own son." Ford sighed, remembering how he'd screamed down the phone in rage and disillusionment. "We were never sons to him, Stanley. We were just… meal tickets. Investments that never paid off."

For a moment or seventeen, there was silence except for the faint echoes rippling up and down the distant passageways of the Labyrinth. Then, as the minutes ticked by, Ford found himself realizing that he too had questions that needed answering before the night dragged on any longer.

 _After all,_ he thought, _this might be the last chance to ask them before we're too incoherent to understand one another…_

"And what about _my_ mad scheme?"

Stan looked blank.

"…you're gonna have to be more specific than that, Ford."

"West Coast Tech. Do you think, if…" Ford took a deep breath, and did his best to keep his voice from running away with itself. "If things had been different, would it have worked out for me there? Do you think I'd have really have been happy there, or was it all doomed to failure right from the start?"

To Ford's immense relief, Stan didn't appear angry or even mildly upset despite the sensitive subject matter. Perhaps, after everything they'd endured in the last few weeks of torture and imprisonment, the childhood feud had finally lost its power to hurt them. Or maybe, just _maybe_ the Weirdness of this place was starting to take a toll on him, warping his emotions and eroding his sense of self just like it had with Ford. He could only pray that it wasn't the latter, but right now, he didn't hold out much hope.

"That depends," Stan muttered at last. "What _did_ you really want out of West Coast Tech? Because I'm bettin' that it wasn't _just_ the chance to science it up with the best and brightest of the nerd pack, was it?"

"No. I suppose what I really wanted was a chance to prove myself, to find a place where I wouldn't be seen as a freak. You know as well as I do how people used to stare at me, how they used to whisper about me behind my back… and you know what the kids like Crampelter used to do to me. I thought that West Coast Tech was the place where I could show everyone that I was more than just a curiosity. **Yfg R zn qfhg z xfirlhrgb, zivm'g R?** Like you said, the best and the brightest were at work there at all the most experimental fields: I thought that if I could just find a place among them, I'd be accepted at last, and that for the first time in my life I'd be among people who didn't think of me as a freak."

" _I_ didn't think of you as a freak," said Stan quietly – and here, Ford heard the reproachfulness in his voice.

"I know. And once upon a time, I thought that was all I ever needed: just one person in my life who accepted me. But…"

"Things change."

"All too quickly. Once I heard that my dream college had taken an interest in me and not the other way around for a change, I thought 'this is it, this is my chance to prove myself to _everyone._ I won't have to be the kid everyone laughs at. I'll be respected. I'll be admired. I'll be _celebrated.'_ And from then on… that was what I wanted out of life. _"_

For a long time, Stan was silent. From where he was currently slumped, Ford couldn't see his face, but he had the distinct impression he was wiping away tears.

"And do you think you'd have been accepted there? Do you think they'd have made you happy?"

Ford took a deep breath. This was going to be the hardest confession he'd made since he'd admitted to his partnership with Bill.

" **Denigami I esidarap eht t'nsi hceT tsaoC tseW tub, ti ezilaer ot sraey ytriht em koot tI,"** he began, but once again his new vocal cords betrayed him.

Sighing, he tried again. **"** **Gsviv ziv dliowh lfg gsviv dsviv R nzwv rg gl Dvhg Xlzhg Gvxs, dliowh dsviv R mvevi nvg Yroo... yfg gsviv ziv dliowh dsviv R dzh kivb gl z nlmhgvi mlmvgsvovhh."**

"Ford?"

By now sweating profusely, Ford tried a third time. " **Hungry eyes and empty promises. 'This is how genius happens, my boy – with a little help from a friend.' A shark's smile. There is an exchange. Lessons that should not be learned. Tears and bruises. Talons that won't let go. A chalice of black bile. The student does not wake. A shallow grave –** no, no, no, _that's not what I meant to say!"_

"Ford, you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to-"

"Please, just give me a minute!" Ford all but screamed. "I want to say this, _I want to say this!"_

He took an even deeper breath, and tried to say something that his runaway self couldn't distort into prophetic Weirdspeak.

"No," he said at last. "I don't think I'd have been happy."

"What, even after everything you just said about infinite realities?"

"Even so. Even if I'd somehow beaten the odds and hadn't run into anyone who was willing to bully or mock or exploit me in some way, even if literally everyone _had_ accepted me… well, I'll be honest, I never knew when to stop working and let things stand… or how, for that matter."

In spite of himself, Stan laughed. "That makes two of us: 'just one more score, and I'll be rich. Just one more scam, and I'll go legit.' But it never works out that way, does it?"

"I think we both found that out the hard way. After a few years in Gravity Falls, I could have gone public with my discoveries, made a fortune, etched my name in the history books and retired… but it wasn't enough, especially once Bill started calling the shots: I wanted to be the man _who changed the world._ I thought that was the only way anyone would ever accept me, the only way anyone would look past who I was. I remember…" He took a deep breath, struggling to keep his voice from spiralling off into incoherency. "Just before the first test, Fiddleford gave me a chance to stop: I could publish my findings and abandon my work on the portal; I'd be rich, famous, and remembered as a scientific pioneer. But I didn't want to listen to him. I didn't want to listen to anyone but Bill."

He sighed deeply. "And you know what the saddest thing of all is? By my earlier standards, I already had just about everything I wanted: I was working in a groundbreaking field of research, I had friends, I had a promising future; I was living and working in a place where I was genuinely accepted – Gravity Falls, the one place I felt like I truly belonged. And by the end, _I couldn't even notice._ It was all just… a springboard to the next big thing Bill was offering. And because of that-"

"Hey!" Stan interrupted. "No blaming yourself anymore, remember? We both agreed to stay _positive_ about all this – god knows how, but we did – so let's just dial back the depression and find something better to do with our time."

"But-"

"We both made mistakes, okay? We both screwed up our lives, we both hurt people close to us without even meaning to, and we're both doing our best to fix things. Don't forget, I did just as much to start this whole Oddpocalypse business as you did. This isn't just _your_ problem anymore, Sixer: we have to set things right together. Besides, I think after everything we've said and done trying to break out of our prisons, it's not as if all this feuding business really matters anymore, does it?"

In spite of himself, Ford smiled. "I suppose it doesn't," he said at last.

"Good. Now, if we're going to talk about mistakes made in life, you _really_ need to hear about the stuff I got up to before I came to Gravity Falls. You might think you made an idiot out of yourself on a mission that was all for nothing, but believe me, it's still not a patch on the time I ended up in the middle of the Mojave, naked and covered in fridge magnets with a dozen cop cars on my tail."

"…I hate to admit it, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a little bit curious as to how you managed to chew your way out of the trunk of a car."

Stan laughed. "You remember me telling you about that one, huh?"

" **Uoy ta meht slley tellum a htiw nam a nehw tegrof t'nod tsuj uoy sgniht emoS,"** Ford chuckled.

"That's the spirit! Now, where should we…" There was a pause, and then Stan suddenly winced in pain.

"What's wrong?"

"I think there's something wrong with my eyes; they keep watering. Full-on onion attack over here. God, I haven't gotten this teary-eyed since I saw _The Duchess Approves._ "

There was a pause, as Ford levitated himself across the room until at last he was peering down at Stan's tired, black-ringed eyes.

"You're not crying, Stanley," he said at last. "You're _bleeding."_

* * *

Thanks to Ford's unique vision, it took less than a minute to ascertain what was wrong.

On the plus side, Stanley wasn't in any danger of bleeding to death. In fact, he'd likely never be in any danger of bleeding to death ever again: his body had mutated under his last exposure to Weirdness, leaving most of his circulatory system effectively redundant – including his blood, which his body was now actively rejecting through any orifice within reach. His heart still beat and his lungs still worked, but on a purely ornamental basis.

Nonetheless, Stanley was deeply shaken by the incident, especially considering it took almost an hour for his blood to be completely evacuated from his body. Thankfully, with their newfound powers, it didn't take much effort to clean up the mess and launder Stanley's clothes, but it still left him both figuratively and literally climbing the walls with anxiety – to say nothing of how his shadow was reacting.

"Jesus," he'd muttered. "First my eyes start changing colour and now _this!_ It's like this place is just trying to give me nightmares; how am I supposed to know if something's wrong with my body now that my blood's gone and my heart's stopped working?"

"I doubt that matters anymore, Stanley: as long as we're under Bill's thumb, he'll never let us die. **There is no life; there is no death; there is only the next move in the endless game.** Plus, thanks to all the wishes we've been making, there'll never be any shortage of 'problems.' It's just that they won't kill us."

"And that's another thing: these mutations have been getting worse lately – you can actually _see_ them by now – so does that mean we're getting close to the end of the game?"

"I'm not sure. **Weirdness enflames my brain.** **Ls wvzi tlw, rg sfigh.** For all I know, this is exactly the point that things go horribly wrong."

" _How_ could things possibly go any more horribly wrong than usual? Do we start growing fingers from our earlobes or something? Do we end up with teeth instead of eyelashes? Are we going to sprout extra heads?"

Ford thought for a moment. "I'd be more worried about the _mental_ side effects, Stanley. How have your headaches been in the last few hours?"

"Much better since we wished for aspirin. Even better once we got hold of a working hangover cure."

"And what about those… intrusive thoughts you've been experiencing? Those voices?"

"Still breaking into my head at odd hours of the day. Most of them are still stuck in the same routine: "Ooh, you've got powers now, Stanley. You deserved them all along, Stanley. You could take on the world if you wanted to, Stanley." Pretty repetitive stuff, if you ask me. It's just like having Self-Loathing around again, except this time they're trying to build me up instead of trying to break me down."

"And that's _all_ they've been saying?"

Stanley looked uncertain. Behind him, his shadow oozed and shifted, and for a moment it almost looked as though it was peering around the column at them. Was it Ford's imagination, or was it grinning?

"Well, some of them… well, they've been saying weirder stuff than usual. 'Take up the scythe, Stanley. Claim your title as the Fourth. Bring hell with you.' Does any of that make sense to you?"

"Not in the slightest," Ford lied. **"Everything is a cipher."**

"Also, the dreams have been getting weirder, too. You'd think with everything that's been happening out there, I'd have nightmares about Dipper and Mabel in danger, getting ripped apart by Bill, being tortured, or even my run-in with Self-Loathing. But ever since my eighth wish…" He shook his head. "Ah, nevermind, it's not important-"

"Go on, please. It might help."

"Well, they're just dreams… but for the last few weeks, I've been having these nightmares of dead bodies: bones scattered in the desert, corpses piled in mass graves, criminals hanging at the gallows, cemeteries that go on forever…"

 _You too?_

"And how does that make you feel?" Ford asked quietly.

Once again, Stan hesitated, and for the first time since they'd set out to complete the game together, something not unlike fear crossed his face.

"Happy," he said at last.

Ford did his best to keep the fear from showing on his face: in the last few days, he'd done his best to keep Stanley from suffering any of the nastier mental symptoms of exposure to Weirdness; he couldn't stop him from playing altogether, but he could do his best to take a little more of the burden than Stan, usually by wishing for something slightly grander than him. He'd even gotten into the distinctly superstitious habit of muttering a mantra of "mental symptoms" under his breath just before making the wish, hoping against hope that he'd end up claiming as much of the madness as possible, hoping that Stanley would be spared the worst of the insanity that'd be their due sooner or later.

And for a time, he'd thought it had worked: Ford had gotten the nightmarish insight into reality, the uncontrollable linguistic shifts, the oracular babble, the sense of disassociation from his own memories, and of course the terrifying nightmares of endless graves and dead worlds; meanwhile, Stan had only had to suffer from the occasional headache and intrusive megalomaniacal thoughts, and that had been it. That had been the way things should have worked. Stan _should_ have been safe.

Now, though…

But what if this _wasn't_ new? What if Stanley had been hiding the full extent of his symptoms? What if things were even worse than he was letting on?

More importantly, why would he do such a thing?

Well, the answer was obvious, now that Ford thought of it: Stanley hadn't wanted him to worry. He'd wanted the game to remain balanced; just as he'd said so long ago, he'd wanted to take the burden off Ford's shoulders. He'd known that as soon as it became apparent that the Weirdness of each wish was driving him crazy, Ford would start protesting and try to take the lion's share of the burden again. So, Stanley had lied: drawing on all his years of experience as a con artist, he'd hid his symptoms and made himself seem a thousand times more optimistic than he actually was, all so Ford wouldn't worry about him.

And Ford, _idiot_ that he was, had taken Stanley at his word. And it wasn't just because he'd been too preoccupied with his own growing list of symptoms: it was because, even after thirty years, he was still making the same mistake. Time and time again, he'd overlooked the feelings of just about everyone else in the situation at hand: first it had been Fiddleford, then Stanley, then Dipper, then Mabel, then Stanley _again,_ and on every single occasion, there'd been a price to pay for his thoughtlessness – whether it had been the incidents surrounding the portal, Project Mentem, or the Wheel – and now, after all the lessons he learned in captivity, he'd only gone and repeated the same mistake all over again.

 _ **...llew sa kaepsdrieW ni**_ **gnikniht** _ **m'I won ,parC ?neddus a fo lla ylsuoicsnocbus egdelwonk noisnemidretni gnitiutni I mA ?lebaM pu gnirb tsuj I did yhw ,no gnaH**_

He shook his head furiously. He needed to get control of the situation, slow the degeneration of Stanley's mind before it was too late, but for that, he'd need to know the full extent of his brother's symptoms.

"And that's all?" he asked. "You haven't been experiencing anything else?"

"Ford, I'm _fine."_

"The fact that you're having the same dreams as me suggests otherwise."

"Ford…"

" **Uli zoo R pmld, blf xlfow yv dvoo lm blfi dzb gl yvxlnrmt z ufoo-uovwtvw Svmxsnzmrzx rm nrmw, ru mlg ylwb**. Now, I need to know your symptoms. Just to set my mind at ease, that's all."

Stanley's face gave a sudden twitch, a muscle spasm pulling corner of his mouth into a mirthless grin. "I don't _have_ any other symptoms," he said tersely.

"Look, this isn't me prying for the sake of prying; I'm not doing this so I can feel superior to you or anything like that: all I want to know is whether or not you've developed any other mental side-effects as a result of your wishes. No judgements, no personal attacks, no editorials. I just want to know if you're okay."

"Well, I am. Apart from the headaches and the nightmares and all the other stuff, I'm perfectly fine!" Once again, Stan's face twitched; again, that involuntary rictus. "Satisfied?"

"I'm trying to help you, Stanley."

"I don't need help!" Stan snapped. His eyes were starting to glow, now, an incandescent blue light beginning to shine in the very centre of each pupil. " _You're_ the one who needs help!"

"Excuse me?!"

"What, you didn't notice the crazytalk that keeps pouring out of your mouth every other sentence? Those weird prophecies? The obsessions? The _paranoia?_ You're the one who's in danger of going crazy here, Ford, not me! You need _my_ help, and frankly, you always have!"

"That's not the point! We're supposed to be helping each other, and we can't do that if we keep secrets from each other!"

"Oh cute. Real cute, Ford, especially considering you've spent most of your adult life keeping secrets from just about everyone on the planet. The only reason I ended up in Gravity Falls was because you wanted my help keeping your secrets, and even then you wouldn't explain everything to me! And you're still keeping secrets from me now!"

"I am not!"

"Are too! I bet all that Weirdspeak you're putting out is just your way of disguising the things you don't feel like sharing with me!"

Ford took a deep breath, and hastily bit back an unpleasant reply. "This is the _Weirdness_ talking, Stanley," he said through gritted teeth. "This _isn't you._ And that's why we both need to settle down and think-"

"About how much time you're wasting?"

The glow in Stanley's eyes was starting to eclipse the rest of his face.

"Look, I just need to know how long you've been lying to me, if you've been making extra wishes behind my back, and how long you've been hiding symptoms!"

"For the last time, I DON'T HAVE ANY OTHER SYMPTOMS!" Stanley bellowed, his eyes ablaze with light.

And with that, Stanley's fist shot out at impossible speed, hammering into the column standing next to him and leaving a crater about eight feet deep in the polished marble. There was a shocked pause, as Stanley withdrew his hand and a spiderweb of cracks raced up the length of the column… and then across most of the surrounding wall. A moment later, both the column and a fifty-foot-long stretch of stone wall came crashing down in a massive cloud of dust, accompanied by a hailstorm of flying masonry – most of which only bounced harmlessly off Ford's instinctive forcefield.

For several seconds, there was silence, as Ford absently gathered up the shattered chunks of marble and, with a wave of his hand and more than a little bit of matter manipulation, forced the wall back into shape.

 _And to think, when you threw that punch, you were only using a fraction of the power you've unlocked,_ he mused.

Meanwhile, Stanley was staring down at his hand, a look of horror stamped on his face as the light slowly receded from his eyes. Then, he spoke – but most of it wasn't in any human language, but in a warped, ethereal dialect only spoken aloud by those touched by Weirdness:

"I'm sorry, I… I didn't mean to say any of that **… R... R wrwm'g nvzm gl wl gszg! R-R'n hliib, R..."**

Stanley stopped in mid-sentence, a hand involuntary rising to cover his own mouth. "What the _hell_ did I just say?" he whispered. "I didn't do that on purpose! How did I **qfhg hzb gszg?! R'n horkkrmt rmgl Dvriwhkvzp!"**

But Ford was already taking count of the new symptoms: aggression, irrational rage, violent outbursts, mild paranoia, Weirdspeak – all signs that Stanley was indeed suffering more than he'd been letting on. Add to that all those nightmares he'd mentioned, and suddenly, Ford could only look at his brother with a mixture of horror and guilt.

Stanley was already changing in ways that he couldn't have foreseen, and not just in terms of _mental_ side-effects either: his eyes were paler, the pupils sometimes glowing a vivid electric blue in moments of rage or fear; random tendrils of Weirdness crackled across his fingers when he found himself lost in thought. Occasionally, unnatural shapes would shift and warp beneath his flesh before vanishing just as quickly, and his veins would radiate a pale glow, almost as if his body was struggling to determine how it should manage the powers it had been imbued with. Most noticeably of all, his shadow was now a living thing, a writhing mass of living void oozing across the room independent of Stanley, casting its own monstrous puppet show upon the walls around them. So far, the shadow didn't appear to be able to affect the physical world, but that wasn't much of a blessing considering that Stanley was only intermittently in control of it.

And then there were all those weird biological quirks that were only visible to Ford's enhanced vision, including the body that somehow worked despite not having a single drop of blood remaining in it. Not that Ford was any better. With a little use of his increasingly all-encompassing vision, he could tell that the two of them were almost neck and neck in terms of symptoms, almost half-transformed into Henchmaniacs. And the more he thought about it, the more nightmarish the thought can become.

 _How long can we keep doing this?_ He wondered. _How long can we keep disassembling ourselves before we no longer count as human beings? How much longer before we can't even remember who we once were? How long before we forget we were anything other than Bill Cipher's pet gods?_

 _Come to think of it, how much Weirdness is left in that reservoir? And when will we be…_

 _Oh my god, no._

Stanley was still apologising, still trying to explain that it had just been just a one-off mistake, trying to convince him to continue his game: "It's my turn next, Ford," he was saying. "I know the symptoms look bad, but you're still a lot further gone than me. It _has_ to be my turn next."

But Ford wasn't listening.

All he could focus on was the hidden trap now visible to his enhanced eyesight.

" **...yrros os m'I ,yelnatS ,dog hO .namuh llits erew ew elihw tuo teg ot elba neeb evah dluohs eW .siht fo tuo yaw a dah eW .riaf t'nsi siht ,on ,on ,oN,"** he muttered pathetically.

"Ford? Are you paying attention?"

"Hmm?"

"I just said it should still be my turn at wishing next: the game stands, no matter what's happened to us so far. It's the only way we'll both be able to escape without being completely made into monsters. Remember?"

Shaken, Ford could only nod. "Yes," he mumbled. "Yes, of course. But not now. We've both had a very big day, and far too many mutations for our own good. We should get some sleep first, try again when we're both fresh and ready for the task at hand."

Stan eyed Ford strangely. "Are you alright, Ford?"

"Oh, fine, fine. Just a little surprised at how quickly you mastered superhuman strength… well, not that much, I suppose – you are the master of punching things after all! Now, uh, let's be off. We went to a lot of trouble to wish for some decent mattresses and blankets, and it'd be a terrible shame to waste them…"

* * *

Before long, Stan acquiesced, if only because the strain of wishing _and_ rejecting every last drop of blood in his veins had proved a lot more exhausting than he was willing to admit, to put things mildly. But as soon as Stanley had started snoring, Ford had levitated out of bed as quietly as he could and returned to the dome for a closer examination of the reservoir above it.

By now, Ford knew there was little point in double-checking his findings: after all, with his vision, it was literally impossible to misdiagnose what he'd found. But nonetheless he found himself shambling back to the centre of the rotunda to look at this new and terrible finding up close – if only in the mad and desperate hope that what he'd seen up there would vanish if he looked at it a second time. Perhaps this was a sign of madness, or perhaps it was a sign of just how dire the situation had become; after all, he'd heard stories of terminal patients asking for a second opinion, hoping that the inoperable cancer diagnosis would be different if they took it up with another doctor. Whatever the case, he had to take a second look.

But sure enough, the trap was still in place, and the game was still rigged.

His sight was improving every day now, not just in terms of noticing the wild and unpredictable powers that governed Bill's dominion, but also in noticing the subtleties inherent in it; now, looking up at the reservoir that they'd been trying to drain for the last few weeks (or months or however long it had been), he took the impossibly intricate mechanisms that had been hiding in its shadow up until today. And now, there no mistaking the trap that had been assembled there – or the reasons for its construction.

Bill had wanted to surprise him, back when he'd first built this prison: obviously, he hadn't known that Stanley would end up here, but he'd clearly had the foresight to predict that Ford would eventually be powerful enough to start making serious escape attempts… and knowing Bill, the prospect of waiting for Ford to reach the very end of the game would have probably sounded stultifyingly boring, no matter how much psychological torture he could crowbar into the game. So, just before the game had begun, he'd added an automated release mechanism to the Weirdness reservoir just above the dome, designed specifically to activate only under very specific circumstances:

As soon as enough Weirdness had been extracted from the reservoir, the mechanism would activate and empty the remaining contents into whoever had made the most recent wish, effectively transforming them into a Henchmaniac ahead of schedule.

Here and now, the reservoir was just about ready to trigger the release mechanism; all it would take was one final wish to set it off. Now, Bill hadn't been able to predict that Stan would ever join Ford in the prison, but it hadn't meant much in the long run, because the end result was still the same:

The game was rigged.

One way or the other, whoever made the next wish was going to be a Henchmaniac. Maybe not a fully-fledged one, given that they'd split almost 3/4s of the Weirdness between the two of them, but being only _half_ a psychopath honestly wasn't much of an improvement. The last bit of juice in the reservoir was among the most concentrated and refined of the entire supply, and it'd be more than enough to make either one of them into an insane demigod; with that kind of power at the winner's fingertips, the fallout of the transformation could only guessed at.

So, all that was left was to calculate the variables.

If Stan made that last wish, he'd be driven into the murkiest depths of insanity: best-case scenario, he'd lose just about everything that made him who he was, and would probably gain a new personality more to Bill's liking; even with all the rationing the two of them had done in the last few weeks, there'd be no escaping at least _some_ loss of identity. But in the _worst-_ case scenario, Stan would be transformed into a psychopathic killer totally subservient to Bill's orders, and would most likely be used to kill anyone who got on the bad side of the new regime… and knowing that Bill was still harbouring a grudge against the Pines family, Stan might just be used to torture Dipper and Mabel as well.

Of course, given that this game hadn't been meant for Stan, there was a distinct chance that Bill wouldn't be happy about seeing his newest Henchmaniac replaced by a substitute – especially given that Stan had clearly been sentenced to a punishment reserved for only the most hated and despised of all of Bill's captives. So, either Stan would be sent back to the Museum for a fresh round of torture… or Bill would kill him on the spot.

But if Ford made the last wish… well, he'd receive the same treatment, obviously. He'd either be a gibbering lunatic with godlike powers, or he'd be a Henchmaniac subservient to the will of Earth's new lord and master. And knowing Bill's sick sense of humour, he'd probably follow up this little game by ordering Ford to murder Stan... but knowing the insanity that he'd be imbued with upon making that final wish, it might very well happen anyway, even if they were somehow able to evade Bill entirely. After all, the Henchmaniacs were the kind of beings who'd happily detonate a white phosphorous bomb under a maternity ward just to hear the screams: upon becoming one of them, the newly-transformed Ford probably wouldn't think twice about murdering Stanley for his own twisted amusement.

There was no third option, no way of escaping the dilemma: either Stan would become a mad demigod (and probably die), or Ford would become a mad demigod (and probably kill Stan).

Either way, everything they'd done – Stan saving Ford in the dream, Ford saving Stan in the Museum, their mutual rationing of Weirdness, and the burden that Stan had helped to shoulder – it had all been for nothing.

No matter what they did, Bill would win.

Again.

Letting out a tortured groan of exhaustion and despair, Ford clenched his eyes shut so tightly that bright lights flashed behind his closed eyelids, hoping, _praying_ that when he finally opened them again, everything would somehow be alright.

 _This can't be happening,_ he thought feverishly. _I only just got him back: for the longest time, I thought he was dead, and now that I've finally gotten him back I'm going to have to say goodbye to him again…_ _And the moment he hears about this, Stan is going to take the fall. I'm going to have to watch him destroy himself… and then I'm going to have to watch him die at Bill's hands._

 _Again._

 _And it's all going to be my fault._

 _AGAIN._

He took a deep breath, and wracked his brain for ideas, frantically scanning the surrounding ether with his unique vision for anything that might help them. Twelve long minutes went by in silence, and still Ford was no closer to a definitive answer. In the end, he fell back on the only option he had left:

Begging.

By now, Ford's enhanced vision encompassed entire worlds, give or take a little effort. He couldn't explain it – after all, he doubted that Bill himself would have given him this power, so perhaps it was just a quirk of Weirdness beyond even the crazy corn chip's control; one way or the other, Ford could see through all the hidden walls dividing the playground. He could even see past the boundaries of Bill's dominion by now, see the colossal presences gathering beyond the interdimensional wall; if he was willing to endure the pain that followed, he could even learn their Names. But most importantly of all, he could see the infinite worlds and what lay behind their facades: parallel universes based on improbably remote possibilities, alien environments and biomes that would have beggared the imagination, hellish kingdoms where only the most depraved of all beings held court, conceptual realities grounded in abstracts too ephemeral for the human brain to truly define… and somewhere out there, a lone mountaintop stood alone, its sole occupant staring out upon the span of infinity in patient expectation.

Somewhere out there, an old friend was watching.

Reaching out with all the power he'd been imbued with, Ford began to whisper across the divide between realities, hoping against hope that his voice could be heard.

 _Jheselbraum,_ he whispered. _Can you hear me?_

 _I missed you._

 _I need your help. I can See the trap. This game can only end in suffering – for me, for Stan, for everyone the "winner" will hurt when they fall under Bill's control._

 _You know the future, Jheselbraum. You knew how the battle would end: you said you recognized the face of the man who would defeat Bill – only I was too proud and too desperate to salvage my sense of self-worth to realize what that meant. I now know that Stanley's plan should have worked, and your prediction_ would _have come to pass… but something went wrong. And now that the future's changed, you have to know how it could end_ this _time; you must know a way out of this._

 _Hasn't Stanley suffered enough in this world, in all possible worlds?_

 _I saw how it could have ended, how many times I lost him forever. I know what might happen to him when this game is over, and I can bear to see it happen again. There has to be another option. There has to be a way to save him: I can't keep letting him sacrifice himself for me. I can't keep letting people take the fall for my mistakes._

 _I know Mr A's letter told me to share the burden, but he obviously didn't see the trap Bill had set: if I carry on sharing the burden, Stanley is going to end up dead or worse. And I know Mr A told me not to play hero, but the option I'm facing isn't me playing the hero: it's not even sacrificing myself. It's only another chance for Bill to get revenge on the Pines family._

 _I'm not a hero, I know that now. I'm not even a scientist anymore. I'm just a freak, a lunatic, a sad old man who hurt everyone close to him and brought about the apocalypse through recklessness and senseless pride. But I can't let Stanley sacrifice himself, not again. Please: there has to be a way that I can spare him from the transformation or save him from the endgame. Tell me what I can do._

 _Do you want me to beg? Because I'll do it, if that's what it takes._

 _Please, Jheselbraum, say something. Anything. I don't care if you call me a fool for doubting your abilities, I don't care if you condemn me for bringing about the apocalypse; in point of fact, I don't even care if you decide to fry a synapse or two just to let me know how many lives I've destroyed. Just let me hear your voice; let me know that someone out there is listening. Let me know that there's a way to save Stanley._

 _Hello?_

…

 _Either you can't reply… or you won't. Well, that's okay. I can live with the silence._

 _I guess I deserve it, after all._

Sighing, Ford cut the link and retreated back into his own mind.

But as disheartening as it had been to hear only dead air, it at least had given him some time to consider his approach: perhaps there was some way of getting the situation under control, or at the very least ensuring that nobody ended up getting killed. Maybe, just maybe, there was a way to save Stanley's life.

True, he'd have to be quick and quiet, if only so that this last, desperate gambit wasn't discovered when Stanley awoke. After all, Stanley was an early riser and a light sleeper – habits picked up from his time in prison, as he'd explained scant days ago – and he wouldn't tolerate any of Ford's tinkering, no matter how well-intentioned it was.

Yes, this was the longest of all longshots so far, but…

It was all he had.

No, more than that: it was all _they_ had.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Ford set to work, hoping against hope that Stanley could one day find it in his hard to forgive him for what he was about to do.

* * *

Stan yawned loudly and turned over in bed, blinking as he gradually slid back into full conscious. As expected, he was back in his makeshift bedroom just outside the labyrinth, and a quick glance in the general direction of his wristwatch confirmed that he hadn't been asleep for much more than three hours. On the upside, the sense of crawling lethargy that had all but consumed him after the last wish was finally gone, and at last he could move without feeling as though his kneecaps had turned to lead. Granted, he wasn't _completely_ refreshed, but it was better than nothing.

Sitting up in bed, he found himself briefly wondering what could have woken him up. After all, with all the wishes they'd made in the last few days, the room should have been deathly quiet. Unless Self-Loathing had somehow achieved physical form again and was doing his best to ruin Stan's beauty sleep, there didn't seem to be anything around that could have jolted him awake.

But then he heard it: the sound of footsteps hurriedly receding into the distance. Once upon a time, it had been the sound of footsteps _approaching_ that had sent him hurtling out of bed, back in the days when the debt collectors had always been hot on his trail. Now, though, it seemed as though he had more to worry about people absconding rather than attacking.

Given that they were alone in the area, it could only have been Ford leaving the room; there was no mistaking the sound of those worn-out adventurer's boots, least of all after all the time he'd heard them pacing up and down these stone passageways. Question was, why had he been in such a hurry to leave?

Perhaps he was still nervous around Stan. And after all, why wouldn't he be? Stan had gotten dangerously close to _attacking_ Ford, and only the fact that the column had been closer had spared him from ending up on the business end of a superpowered fist. Yes, that last argument they'd shared had clearly freaked him out, and what with all the holes that the Weirdness had been digging in his sanity over the last few weeks, Ford didn't need any more scares.

 _Wow, who'd have thought? Guess you should've thought about that before you started tearing down walls and screaming abuse at your brother, shouldn't you? But then, you're almost as crazy as he is. He knows about the wishes you've been stealing on the sly. You should have played fair, Stanley._

Stan shook his head wearily. He couldn't afford to think like this now: the longer he focussed on his screw-ups, the more chances they'd get to trip him up in the long run. He'd find a way to apologise to Ford, and then they'd get that next wish over and done with. So, stretching luxuriantly, he launched himself out from under the covers with an athleticism he only possessed thanks to his newfound powers, and somersaulted out onto the cold ground, ready for anything in the world.

And then he saw he envelope sitting on Ford's bed, addressed " _to my brother Stanley"_ in an elegant script too precise and too refined to be anything other than Ford's handwriting. Curious, he opened the envelope, unfolded the letter inside, and began reading.

 _Dear Stanley,_

 _You were right when you said I was still keeping secrets. Frankly, this might be the very last of them. Please bear with me; this might be the most painful thing I ever have to commit to paper. It's no small irony that I could magically conjure up the paper and paper I needed in the space of a second, and yet couldn't think of anything to write for almost three hours. Nonetheless, I hope I can still be understood… in spite of myself._

 _I can't do this anymore._

 _I'm sorry._

 _Bill Cipher rigged the game in his favour long ago: the next wish in line is a trap, his way of ending the game early. Then again, even if it wasn't, our only guaranteed escape from this prison is if one of us claims the madness and power of a Henchmaniac._

 _I know you're already volunteering yourself for the final wish even as you read these words, but for once, it's not going to be on your shoulders._

 _I can't let you sacrifice yourself again, not when I know the price you'd pay: even if the transformation didn't wipe away everything about you that made you yourself, Bill would probably kill you anyway out of spite for spoiling his game. And I can't allow that to happen again._

 _Thanks to my enhanced perception, I've seen so many other realities – much more than I ever visited back when I was still roaming the multiverse, expanses of time and space beyond mortal comprehension. There are iterations of the multiverse itself repeating endlessly across infinity in thousands upon thousands of possible variations, most of them inaccessible even to Bill Cipher's power (and that of his parallel counterparts). There are universes where we never parted ways, where I forgave you for the science fair debacle much earlier, where we set out to stop Bill together from the moment you arrived in Gravity Falls._

 _And there are worlds where your plan to stop Bill worked: he took the bait, he entered your mind, and memory gun erased him from it. But I've seen the aftermath as well: in some worlds, you memories were wiped away, and you only_ just _managed to recover from it with help from us. And in others, your memories didn't return and we had to start again from scratch._

 _And in some worlds, you never awoke from the memory-wipe. Bill took you with him._

 _Over and over again, I've watched you sacrifice yourself for all of us. And that hadn't been the first time, either: you've always been there for me, even when I didn't want it to be so, even when I'd have insisted on leaving me to my fate. I can't tell you how grateful I am for that…_

… _but I can't keep doing this._

 _I can't let you sacrifice yourself again._

 _This is_ my _game… and this round, the burden is mine to bear, as it should have been all along. It's time I paid for my mistakes in full. I know this will hurt you more than anything else in the world, and for that, I'm sorry, but I can't let it happen to you: you still have a family out there. You still have a life. So, it has to be me._

 _I can't predict what will happen after I transform, but I'll do my best to keep you safe. As long as you stay out of sight and don't get my attention, I should be too busy departing to do anything homicidal. Once I'm gone, you should be able to take the same exit I took. Pack all the provisions you can carry, and keep on moving until you're absolutely certain that nobody's following you. Find the others, gather them together, and stop Bill… and me, if necessary. With any luck, I won't even be recognizable as a human being, by then, so it'll be easier._

 _Please, don't tell Dipper and Mabel what happened. Tell them I died – no heroic sacrifice, no glorious last stand, just a simple death that nobody saw coming._

 _But whatever happens next, I want you to know that you were the best brother I could have possibly hoped for. Thank you for everything – for the good times, for the sacrifices, for the advice I should have listened to – and remember: this is not your fault._

 _Goodbye,_

 _Ford_

It took less than a minute for Stan to finish reading; by the time he'd reached the end, he was already in motion.

"Ford? FORD?!"

Heart hammering, he sprinted out of the room and down the corridor as fast as his feet could carry him; by now, he was already a thousand times stronger and faster than any ordinary human being, and he could see the walls blurring past him as he ran, but he could already tell that he still wasn't moving _fast enough._ Ford was already several hundred yards ahead of him, and now that he'd heard the shouting behind him, he was beginning to pick up speed.

"FORD, STOP!"

But Ford was clearly beyond listening: he just went on walk down the corridor towards the rotunda. He hadn't broken into a run yet, but he was certainly moving at a very brisk pace.

 _Okay, I can work with that,_ Stan thought, mind racing. _I'll be able to catch up with him before he reaches the dome, we can talk things over, and nobody will get hurt. All have to do is actually catch up with him. Fine. Easy. Doable… just as long as he doesn't do anything stupid. Dear god, why would anyone make the corridors this long?_

Ford loomed ahead of him, just reaching the end of his relentless, unflinching march towards the rotunda. He hadn't even bothered to look over his shoulder: his eyes were locked on the road ahead, on the distant spot just under the dome where the final wish was to be made.

Muttering expletives, Stan gave up on running and launched himself upwards; now airborne, he rocketed down the corridor at eyewatering speed, easily clearing the last hundred feet between the two brothers. Steeling himself for a collision, Stan reached out, ready to grab Ford and tackle him to the ground…

Only for his hands to close on empty air.

Ford had teleported himself away, leaving Stan to crash sidelong into the wall so violently that he tore a hundred bricks free from the fortifications as he tumbled to the floor. For several seconds, he could only lie there, covered in dust and broken, unharmed but dazed by the impact. Then, hauling himself out from under the heap of shattered masonry, he struggled upright and tried to work out where Ford had ended up. He didn't have to look far: by now, Ford was already at the centre of the rotunda, looking up at the dome.

Ready to make a wish.

"WAIT!" Stan hollered. "WAIT! WE CAN TALK ABOUT THIS, FORD! JUST SLOW DOWN AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE DOING! _PLEASE!"_

Some distance away, Ford looked back at Stan for the first time since the chase had begun, his expression almost unreadable. For a moment, it looked as though he might relent. But then he sighed, and Stan heard him say something that made his heart all but stop.

"I'm sorry," Ford whispered.

And then, before Stan could stop him, before he could take to the air once more, Ford waved a hand – and suddenly the gateway to the rotunda was blocked by a solid barrier of crystalline glass; spanning the length and breadth of the passage ahead, it was clearly well over six feet thick. Immediately, Stan tore into it with his fists, pounding and pummelling the newly-grown wall in a desperate attempt to break through it, but only succeeded in chipping a few flakes of the glass away. Whatever this wall was made of, it was clearly harder than diamond, because even with the superhuman strength he'd gained from the dome, he was barely cracking it.

"No!" Stan howled. "NO!"

He tried everything he could to break the wall, calling upon all the powers he'd learned so far: he belched up a plume of fire that would have melted solid steel; he hammered the glass with blasts of kinetic force powerful enough to pulverise granite; he bombarded the wall with lightning bolts, white-hot trails of electricity coursing from his fingers; he even did his best to crush the wall beneath a field of enhanced gravity – but none of it worked. Desperate, he tried teleporting – but unlike Ford, Stan hadn't had time to master the finer points of it, and only succeeded in briefly fading in and out of existence before landing flat on his ass.

In the end, Stan could only peer through the glass as he pounded against it, looking on helplessly as his brother left him behind.

Again.

* * *

Ford took a deep breath and wiped away a few stray tears as he took his place under dome.

He'd wanted Stan to stop him. He'd wanted to let him catch up, to talk him out of what he was about to do – before Ford had finally brow-beaten himself into teleporting away. And he'd almost given up entirely when he'd heard Stan pleading with him. Of course, he no idea what he'd do next, or if he'd be fast enough to stop him from making the sacrifice instead, but he considered it.

Because he didn't want this to be the last Stan saw of him. He'd wanted to vanish, to disappear into the ether and leave behind only the letter. That way, there'd be nobody to witness his descent into madness, or his mutation into Bill's creature; that way, Stan wouldn't have to see what happened next. No nightmares, no terror, no grief – just a disappearance in the night.

For a moment, Ford had almost considered letting Stan talk him down and lead him away from the edge, for the letter hadn't really been enough for him. He wanted to say goodbye _properly._ He wanted to say everything he hadn't thought of when he'd still been writing the letter: he wanted to let him know that Stan could succeed where Ford had failed, to tell Dipper that he was sorry that they hadn't had time for more adventures together, to tell Mabel how sorry he was, to tell Fiddleford how much he missed him…

But he knew that he couldn't. He had a duty to finish the game alone – for the sake of Stan's life and sanity, for the sake of everyone Ford had doomed through his foolishness.

So he'd shut the door and did his best to deafen his ears to Stanley's screams.

 _Alright then, smart guy,_ he thought. _You've got one wish left. What are you going to spend it on?_

For five daunting seconds, he pondered the thought. He knew he couldn't wish for Bill to die; the game didn't work like that. Nor could he wish for Stan to escape, or for Weirdmageddon to be over, or for the Pines family to be united as one. So, what could he wish for? What could do the least amount of harm – or the most amount of good, come to think of it?

But ultimately, there was only one thing he could possibly say.

" **.stflmv wvivuufh h'vS. bvomzgH lg vnlx nizs lm gvO."**

As the echoes died away, Ford cast one final look in Stan's direction: he was still trying to pound his way through the glass, still begging for Ford to change his mind. And though he knew that Stanley probably couldn't hear him at this distance, he found himself opening his mouth to say something – if only to say goodbye….

And then the Weirdness struck, a multi-coloured kaleidoscopic cascade of chaotic energy rain down on him from above like a bolt of lightning, permeating his being from all angles and flooding every cell in his body with a wild torrent of mutating, distorting, corrupting power. At once, he knew that he was becoming something different, that the Weirdness would sculpt him into a new being as Bill had intended, but first, it would destroy him in every sense of the world.

Ford's blood _boiled._

His veins burned, his heart exploded inside his chest, his bones shattered a thousand times in a million different places, his skin ruptured and spilled the bubbling froth that his blood had become across the ground. His eyeballs burst inside their sockets, his lungs shrivelled away, his bowels melted, his flesh slid off the pulverized remains of his bones… and then, just as quickly as it had happened, his injuries vanished and he was whole again – just in time for the next onslaught.

Now he was changing, his body warping and twisting and reshaping itself; and his brain was changing too, the inside of his skull ablaze with distorting energies. Ford opened his mouth to scream in pain, but what emerged was a blood-curdling, metallic roar that couldn't have ever been produced by human vocal cords.

 _At last,_ he thought deliriously. _Daedalus knows the sun's embrace._

Somewhere on the periphery of his senses, he thought he heard Jheselbraum's voice, trying to comfort him in his agonies.

Then another bolt of pain ripped through his psyche, and all he knew was the void.

* * *

At long last, the last foot of glass crumbled away beneath his fists, and Stan tore his way into the rotunda. By now, he'd seen the lightshow under the dome and heard those terrifying sounds, and he knew he was too late, but he hurried nonetheless: he had to help _somehow_ or he'd never forgive himself.

But for the longest time, he couldn't see Ford at all: the blinding lightshow of Weirdness covered everything, obscuring the centre of the rotunda and warding off Stanley's attempts at getting closer. For almost a minute, he called Ford's name, raising his voice over the cacophony of erupting energies and growing steadily more frantic for every second that passed without a reply.

And then, without warning, the storm passed just as quickly as it had arrived, and room was dark and silent once more.

"Ford?" Stanley whispered.

No response.

Trembling, he conjured a light in the palm of his hand and cast it anxiously about the rotunda.

Then, he saw him.

Ford was kneeling on the floor at the heart of the chamber, eyes closed as if asleep. For the moment, he appeared unharmed, but as Stan crept closer, he realized that several things were quiet clearly amiss.

For one thing, every last inch of his clothes had turned black; his gloves were gone, and the trenchcoat he'd treasured ever since he'd returned from the portal had been replaced by a heavy outer garment that looked more like a cloak than anything else – it even had a hood, of all things.

For another, he seemed… thinner, somehow. In fact, as Stan drew closer and saw the arms within the sleeves of the cloak, he realized that Ford was little more than skin and bones. Any human being _this_ emaciated could only be dead or dying; by contrast, Ford was very much alive… or so it appeared.

Most unusually of all, the skin on his hands and arms didn't seem like skin at all anymore, but more like bone. His flesh was now coated in a layer of hard, rigid carapace, as if his skeleton was now on the _outside_ of his body. Only his face, deathly-pale as it was, remained unaffected.

Stan reached out to touch him – hoping that he could wake him from whatever trance he was in – he realized that Ford's skin was freezing cold to the touch, as if he'd been plunged into icy water.

 _He doesn't have a pulse,_ he realized with a thrill of horror. _He doesn't have a heartbeat anymore._

"Ford?" he whispered, giving him a shake. "Can you hear me?"

By way of an answer, Ford's eyelids snapped open, and Stan almost recoiled in horror at the sight.

The glow in his eyes was gone.

Now his eyes were pitch-black hollows, vacant and expressionless… and as Stan looked closer, he realized that he could see stars in the blackness, an entire galaxy of stars slowly creeping through the infinite night contained within Ford's eyes. But the sight didn't inspire wonder or amazement: there was no majesty to the starscape unfolding there, no bright shining suns and multi-coloured nebula, no undiscovered planets, nothing that would have ended up in the science magazines that Ford had once read. No, the stars in Ford's eyes were bloated crimson lumps or shrivelled white dots floating helplessly in the void, all of them withering even as Stan watched; he wasn't any expert on the subject, but something told him that these stars were in their death throes.

There was a heart-freezing pause.

A black hole oozed through a cluster of red giants, devouring all in its path, and Ford smiled, his pallid face erupting into a delighted grin.

Very slowly, he rose to his feet, levitating about four inches off the ground in the process.

Then, with a voice deeper than the grinding of tectonic plates, he proclaimed, **"AND NOW I AM BECOME DEATH, THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS."**

"…Ford?"

If Ford had heard him at all, he gave no indication. He merely looked around him, seemingly unable to stop smiling. After about a minute, he spoke again: his voice sounded a little closer to normal, apart from the faint echoing reverb, but the language was utterly incomprehensible.

" **.nepo yllanif si silasyrhc eht ,tnemnosirpmi fo ytinifni na retfA .tsal ta eerf ma I."**

"I-"

" **Gsviv ziv hl nzmb hszwldh rm nb nvnlib. Wrw R zodzbh szev z uzxv, li wrw lmob tzrm lmv qfhg mld. Sld nzmb ornyh wrw R klhhvhh fmgro mld? R xzm'g ivnvnyvi gsv hlfmw lu nb ldm elrxv. Hl nfxs eztfvmvhh. Hl nfxs olhh. Zmw bvg R hnrov."**

The smile broadened.

" **Zmw gl gsrmp... R svhrgzgvw. "**

"Ford! Can you understand me?"

The man with stars for eyes looked down at him with interest. Then, without warning, he began to laugh.

" **?uoy t'ndluow ,em rof gnihtyreve decifircas evah dluow uoy ,hA .niap rehtruf em eraps ot tsuj sehsiw gnilaets erew uoy taht ees neve nac I .won hcum os ees nac I !yelnatS ,uoy dnatsrednu nac I esruoc fO."**

"Could… you repeat that in English?"

" **And I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him,"** said Ford, grinning like a skull. **".neeserof evah t'ndluoc eh syaw ni egnahc eW ?ti si ,depoh lliB sa elpmis sa ton s'ti tuB."**

Stan couldn't speak another word; he couldn't work out whether he should run for his life or not. Frankly, he felt like he was going to cry: already, the dreadful words _Have I lost him forever?_ were floating across Stan's mind, and with every second that passed, it was a little harder to look at those monstrous eyes.

" **Mld gsv trug szh yvvm wrerwvw zonlhg vjfzoob. Mld mlgsrmt ivzoob hvkzizgvh fh, Hgzmovb. Mld dv hsziv gsv kldvi lu z tlw. Mld dv ziv ylgs z gslfhzmw grnvh nliv kldviufo gszm Yroo rmgvmwvw. Mld..."**

Ford grabbed Stan by the shoulders, and Stan almost lashed out in terror as he felt those bony hands clamping down on him. But at the last second, he froze in fear – and then Ford drew him into an ice-cold hug.

" _ **WE**_ **ARE DEATH,"** said Ford, jubilantly. **"DEIMOS AND PHOBOS MARCH TO THE END OF THE WORLD AS ONE."**

"Really? That's nice," Stan mumbled.

There was an awkward pause as Ford finally released him from the hug.

"Uh… what do we do now?"

" **.dednetni lliB taht dlrow eht eb t'now tsuj tI .yelnatS ,yortsed ot dlrow a evah eW."**

"I… don't suppose you could translate that?"

" **Dv nfhg urmw gsv lgsvih. Gsv Qfwtv szh tzgsvivw gsvn gsilfts gsv nzxsrmzgrlmh lu gsv Svizow. Mld, dv nfhg qlrm gsvn."**

"Oh."

" **.yrt ll'I tub ...hcum yas t'nac I .yleritne tegrof I .sdnuos dna sdrow namuh htiw kaeps ot ekil saw ti tahw rebmemer ot tluciffid s'ti ,won ssendriew si em fo hcum oS .ylbisneherpmoc kaeps ot tluciffid s'tI."**

Ford hesitated, and when next he spoke, it seemed to be only with great difficulty. **"I have… gifts to give,"** he said haltingly. **"There are others like us. I owe them presents. We must find them, Stanley. They need our help."**

"Um… who are these people we're meant to be finding, exactly?"

" **Mabel is one. We missed her birthday. She is frightened and lost. Not even Famine can still her fears. She needs her crown to make her whole."**

"Wait a minute – _crown?_ Why a crown? Don't get me wrong, it sounds like a nifty gift idea, but… where did you get the idea from?"

" **Zmw hsv dvmg uligs xlmjfvirmt, zmw gl xlmjfvi."**

"Oh."

" **And… I have a gift for you as well…"**

And before Stan could even ask what the gift was, Ford raised his right hand high in the air, and a beam of pure shadow poured forth from it, opening a gigantic portal just below the domed roof. And from the portal leaped a _horse_ of all things, a magnificent muscular greathorse with a coat so pale it seemed to drain the colour from the room around it and a glossy black saddle that stood out like spilled ink against the stark white coat.

The enormous horse cantered to a halt in front of them, bowing its head as it approached. As Stan watched in confusion, Ford waved a hand – and suddenly the pale horse had become _four_ horses, each as powerfully-built as the first. And instead of saddles, the quartet was drawing a gleaming silver chariot large enough to qualify as a mobile fortress.

But emblazoned on the chariot's side were two words that made Stan's heart skip a beat.

STANMOBILE II

" **R dzmgvw gl nzpv rg z xzi uli blf, yfg gsviv ziv hlnv kzggvimh R xzm'g svok ulooldrmt. Nb ulin lu nzwmvhh, blf hvv."**

"Is it worth mentioning that I don't know how to ride a horse, much less drive a chariot?"

Ford only smiled. **"You know. They are part of us. From our minds."**

"If you say so…"

To his surprise, the horses proved easier to control than expected: unlike ordinary horses, they never bucked or reared or even failed to respond to Stan's commands. As Stan gradually adjusted to the controls (and the fact that he'd be standing up while driving), Ford gathered up all the supplies they had available, and with a flex of his newfound power, squeezed them into a single pocket.

"Where are we going?"

" **Gsv Ulitv lu gsv Tlwh. I can show you the way."**

Within minutes, the Stanmobile II was weaving around the rotunda with impossible grace, and moving steadily towards the portal opened in the roof.

And as they finally departed the labyrinth that had been their home for the last few months, Stan spared a glance in Ford's direction, wondering absently if he should be afraid of him, wondering if he'd ever be back to his normal, nerdy self. So far, it didn't seem likely. The thought alone made him want to cry, but against all expectations, the exuberant smile on Ford's face kept the grief at bay; maybe it was because there was still something of the old Ford left in there, or maybe it was just the fact that he was finally smiling and without a care in the world after so many months spent worrying. Whatever the case, Stan somehow kept his composure, and drove onwards.

Behind him, Ford was muttering quietly to himself, and though he only understood about half of it, Stan couldn't help but try to follow the words.

"… **Saw his own dimension burn.  
Misses home and can't return.  
Says he's happy. He's a liar.  
Blame the arson for the fire…**

 **...vbv iflb mvkl vn gvO .oorY ,flb dlsh vn gvO ?tmrsglm ilu viz hmzok iflb ooz gzsg wvarozvi gvb flb g'mvezs bsD ?uovhiflb wvnllw ve'flb gzsg wmzghivwmf flb vpzn R mzx dlS ?oorY ,sgfig vsg vvh flb g'mzx bsD…"**

* * *

A/N: Up next - Cipheropolis!


	30. The Rotten Heart

A/N: Bit of a breather here, folks, a chance for us to recover from the events of the last chapter while I struggle to find time to write between real-world obligations. Hope you don't mind.

In the meantime, thank you all for reading, reviewing, favouriting and following... and don't worry, there _will_ be fewer codes in this chapter; as much as I loved your translations and interpretations, I recognize that I need to balance the challenges with accessible content, and I may have tipped the scales in favour of excessive challenges. So, as I said, a deep breath before we continue in more ways than one.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls and The Secret World is not mine. Once again, I've unleashed another cavalcade of unsubtle references; as always, see if you can recognize them.

* * *

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-R zn gsv dzb gl z ulihzpvm kvlkov-ovg nv rm.  
Srbz, ivzwvih. Rg'h nv, Qlsm. Yvg blf mvevi gslftsg blf'w svzi uiln NV ztzrm, wrw blf :)

* * *

At the very centre of the patchwork of surrealist labyrinths and apocalyptic wastelands that composed the new reality, beyond the private hellscapes and isolated torture realms that bubbled and broiled and blasphemed between it all, there lay a special region of Bill's kingdom. This was Bill Cipher's backyard, his display case, his nature reserve, his landfill – a place where everything that couldn't be sorted into its own special hell was eventually dumped and left to fester.

This putrescent continent was the Rotten Heart.

Unlike some of the other playgrounds, this place was open to anyone who might happen to stumble across its boundaries, for it had been meant for virtually everyone. This was to be the ultimate receptacle for the wandering remnants of the human race: for the refugees, the dispossessed, the wanderers and the ramblers, for those not fortunate enough to have been killed off for good and those not despised enough to have been given a private hell of their own, this was to be their home until they finally stopped being amusing. Sooner or later, no matter what they did, no matter how far they travelled, no matter how many times they were killed, they all ended up in the Rotten Heart.

On the shores of an ocean of rippling blue-and-black fog dotted with the eternally-sinking husks of ships that had fallen foul of the knifelike reefs, upon a beach of razor-sharp glass shards littered with the writhing, leaden bodies of those unfortunate enough to make contact with the ethereal sea, the path to the Heart began. Many refugees never made it off the beach: the dream-stuff that was the ocean infested them, polluted their veins and paralysed their bodies, leaving them eternally decomposing amidst the razor sand and barbed-wire kelp, their minds awash with the visions the sea induced. Thus, this place was called the Nightmare Coast.

The Shapeshifter, having no need of a ship and strong enough wings to carry him over the shredding sands, bypassed the whole thing without much effort at all.

Uphill from the beach, past a sweep of lacerating dunes, lay the Gardens of Torments.

Here, a number of windows into the private hells of Bill's kingdom had been opened, and a particularly unfortunate selection of offenders had been left to suffer before the eyes of the world: anyone who wanted to reach the epicentre of the Heart would have to travel through the gardens and witness the punishments meted out to those who dared oppose Bill Cipher's rule. Kept out of phase with reality, every grisly detail of their torture could be witnessed, but nothing of the outside world could reach them: they could not be rescued, nor could any friendly face be seen or kindly word be heard. Thus, the passers-by could not help, but only watch in horror as the parade of abominations played out before them.

Shifty, being Shifty, had little interest in helping any of them – though as he swept through the garden, several of the private hells envisioned caught his eye.

The prisoners on display were rebels, revolutionaries, assassins, regicidal maniacs and all manner of militias, anyone who'd made the mistake of trying to take the fight to Bill. In fact, the only people who weren't on display were the Zodiac; after all, they'd gotten closer than anyone else in the entire universe to destroying Bill once and for all, and Bill's ego wouldn't tolerate such news reaching the ears of his playthings. Instead, the lesser offenders were brought out in force: the failures who'd never made it as far as the Wheel.

Here was a governor, a petty man who'd made the mistake of rallying his constituents against the Henchmaniacs. Normally, this was the kind of politician that 8-Ball wouldn't have bothered to scrape off his toenails, but then the idiot decided to challenge Bill to a public debate over the proper use of power. Bill had replied by promptly incinerating the unfortunate governor. In his new ethereal display case, he was burning still… and always would be. On he went, a living bonfire tripping over his charred feet and blundering into walls with scarecrow arms wreathed in flame, his smouldering toupee haloed a halo of fire; wherever he went, he left a trail of sizzling fat and a smell of roasting meat.

Here was a sniper, some unfortunate ex-military hero who'd thought he could end Weirdmageddon with a single bullet on a clear day. Unfortunately, he hadn't been armed with a quantum destabilizer and hadn't realized that shooting Bill in the eye would only piss him off. Now, the sniper was his own bullet: seized and crumpled like paper, his limbs crushed inward, his body squeezed into a ball no bigger than a marble and fired – splattering the human bullet against a wall. Then, he'd be scraped off, revived, rebuilt and made to repeat the sequence again – for ever.

Here was the Time Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron, retrieved from a future that no longer existed and suspended in time like flies in amber, subject to all the random whims of temporal flux that could be unleashed – all at once: aged by hundreds of years while simultaneously regressed into infancy, smeared across a millennium of history without ever once moving or breathing or even living, becoming different people – and sometimes different species entirely – as their personal timelines randomly rewrote themselves. All suffered, and all did so paradoxically.

Here was Time Baby, a cloud of disconnected molecules struggling to reassemble themselves, confined and compressed just enough for the process to become horrifyingly visible. Every now and again, his body would briefly coalesce just long enough to take on an almost-corporeal form, screaming in agony as he struggled to reassert his own existence; but as quickly, the forces that imprisoned him swept his body apart once again.

Here was Blendin Blandin, dangling from a boat-hook driven through his jaw and out his mouth. Hands tied behind his back, he could only kick helplessly in mid-air as the hook and chain swung him back and forth across his little display case, with all the myriad failures and humiliations of his career playing out around him, a little more exaggerated with every iteration. For good measure, his throat was split by a vicious-looking surgical scar from where the Henchmaniacs had removed his larynx – Bill's replacement for the mute button.

Here was Rumble McSkirmish, trapped in a side-scrolling beat-em-up game, where he was continuously reincarnated as a one-hit-point enemy that even the most incompetent player could easily eliminate. Plus, the bonus round gave the player free reign to punch every last inch of flesh off Rumble's digital bones.

Here was Sev'ral Timez, sewn and stitched together into a writhing, multi-bodied lump of diseased flesh, eternally screaming in effortlessly-tuneful voices.

Here was an awkward, spindly figure lurching clumsily around the forests of old Gravity Falls on legs too long and too thin to comfortably support him. At nine feet and seven inches, he was the tallest of his kind to ever walk the Earth, and every step he took was agony: his joints throbbed with every move, his overextended limbs hunching his shoulders and back into a painful arch, and his oversized feet regularly tripped him up no matter how carefully he walked. Whenever he fell, another bone snapped. There was no support to be found among his family and friends, most of whom refused to even share their home with him a moment longer, and often took to stabbing at his feet with knitting needles. Had he been able to, this wobbling, pain-wracked giant would have begged to be put out of his misery, but all he could say was "Shmebulock."

Here was Candy Chiu, separated from all her friends and from anyone who might sympathize with her, condemned to a never-ending procession of meaningless tasks: paperwork, editing, filing, shelf-stacking, coding programs that would never be used, stacking shelves, hauling cargo, searching for lost valuables, killing the occasional horde of zombies, and most arduous of all, music camp. And there would usually be someone attractive and fitting Candy's tastes in the vicinity, and none of them ever bothered to pay any attention to her. In this world, an extrapolation of her worst nightmare, she was kept working and motivated by the vague promise that one day she _might_ be rewarded with an hour of free time. But no matter how hard she worked, no matter how well she performed, her taskmasters were never satisfied. Candy often ended up collapsing from exhaustion, sometimes even dying from it, but the invisible taskmasters would always be around to resuscitate her – and jolt her back into wakefulness with a cattle prod.

Every now and again, an information pamphlet would fall from the sky.

 _Tired of being tired?_ It proclaimed. _Sick to death of being weak? Bored with being a puny human? Pay a visit to the Ruinous Toymaker's workshop, and we'll take away all those little aches and pains and vital organs. Just ask your taskmasters to make an appointment. Don't wait, don't delay, and don't bother staying human! Come on down to the Ruinous Toymaker's workshop and be improved!_

And every time it happened, Candy would break down in tears and howl – swinging wildly between English and Korean – "STOP IT! _PLEASE_ STOP IT! PLEASE, GIVE ME A MINUTE WITH MABEL OR GRENDA AND I'LL NEVER COMPLAIN AGAIN! JUST LET ME SEE MY FRIENDS!"

But it never worked, and every time it happened, the pamphlet looked just a little bit more tempting.

And here was Grenda Grendinator. On the face of things, her life in captivity was nothing short of idyllic: her life in Gravity Falls was perfectly replicated, her friends and family all recreated in exacting detail, and Marius Von Fundhauser was by her side. By all appearances, she should have had everything she needed to be perfectly happy… except for one tiny problem.

Whenever Grenda reached out to touch – to kiss Marius, to hug Mabel and Candy, to cuddle her pet iguana, to do _anything_ that required physical contact – it all started to fall apart. No matter how gentle she was, no matter how carefully she tried to interact with the world around her, whatever she touched began to slowly crack. Marius, Mabel, Candy, her parents – one by one, they crumbled into shards of screaming ex-human being and fell to the floor, collecting in vast heaps of living, suffering porcelain that only went on howling in agony as Grenda tried frantically to reassemble them. Eventually, she'd be left alone in a world of ruins, populated only by screaming piles of rubble that still begged to know why Grenda had hurt them so badly… and of course, the huge sign dominating the horizon:

 _YOU MONSTER._

Inevitably, the rubble would be swept away and a sobbing Grenda would be allowed to begin again with a fresh landscape of people to accidentally annihilate.

All these horrific punishments and more were glimpsed by the Shapeshifter as he swept past them. Of course, the names of these prisoners and their reasons for being here eluded him entirely, and though few of the unfortunate victims sparked the odd flicker of recognition in his brain, he couldn't determine why. Despite Shifty's best efforts to recall where and how he might have seen those agony-stricken faces, none of the prisoners stirred anything other than the occasional sting of déjà vu.

In the end, he could only march onwards through the Garden of Torments, edging ever closer to the very centre of the Rotten Heart – totally oblivious to the whispering that echoed behind him.

* * *

Beyond the gardens, atop a desolate, blasted hill, sat possibly the ugliest collection of buildings that had ever had the misfortune of being labelled a city.

From what Shifty heard from the gatekeepers (once he'd found a suitably nondescript human form to wear), this place sometimes sat in the shadow of the Fearamid so that its master could watch the suffering in action below, but with the eternal palace now on tour around the maddened cosmos, it now sat drowning quietly in the sweltering gloom of the black sun's anti-radiance. The Henchmaniacs almost never visited this city except on special occasions, and Bill only occasionally appeared at the great pyramid-shaped shrine in the central plaza; few monsters ever attacked the place other than wild dogs and bandit gangs, and little Weirdness occurred within the city limits unless Bill was bored and felt like sending a message. As the gatekeepers themselves explained, this place had been meant to be a nature reserve in which the unattached refugees of the new world could live and work and suffer and die as they had in Earth's antiquity.

For this was _Cipheropolis_ , the great sanctuary-city of mankind, in which humanity could live free – with Bill's strict permission. Judging by the smell of raw sewage and the screams floating from over the wall, little amenities like safety, law or basic human dignity were optional at best.

The outer fortifications were bad enough – a hastily-gathered mishmash of barbed wire fences, crudely-cemented brick walls, and a few paltry hillocks of rusted metal. Beyond it lay a sweltering labyrinth of oddly-built buildings: scrap metal shanties reinforced with cardboard and other rubbish, rickety wooden houses built from the few trees left at the bottom of the hill, squat cubes of mud brick drying in the suffocating heat, crude granite towers held together with improvised concrete, even artificial caverns of bone – gathered from the many corpses this place produced. Worse still, chimneys from smithies and brickworks and other primitive industries belched smoke into the air, muddying the sky with putrid black clouds and only making the place seem even more hellish from a distance.

The residents had clearly done their best to add a little colour and artistry to the mix: some of the houses had been painted bright red, blue, gold, purple; Christmas lights, neon signs and even a few digital billboards had been scavenged from the ruins of the world beyond; there was even the occasional mural painted on the side of a building. But it was all overshadowed by the grotesquery of it all – most prominently of all by the giant skyscrapers of gleaming black volcanic rock dominating the skyline, a vast mass of needle-sharp stalagmites stabbing brutally upwards into the polluted sky alongside the barbed tip of the Pyramid Shrine. According to the gatekeepers, Bill Cipher himself had built these towers, extruded them from the rock of the hill itself and filled them with rooms in which the refugees of his kingdom – those who had no hell of their own and no other place to go – could huddle and cower and give thanks to their patron.

And just for good measure, some smart-ass had added a hand-painted sign to the front gate: "WELCOME TO CIPHEROPOLIS. ABANDON HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE."

Shifty wasn't looking forward to spending time among humans, least of all an entire city of them, and the thought of remaining invisible among so many single-formed weaklings filled him with nausea… but for now it was unavoidable: assuming Mr Carter had been telling him the truth, Mabel Pines would be here in a few days, and if she had any intelligence, she wouldn't dare enter a place like this if there was any word of a Shapeshifter loose in the city. Until she arrived, he'd have to keep a low profile, disgusting though it was. Besides, he at least an address: provided this Rallying Flag Hotel had private rooms, at least he'd have the luxury of being separated from the revolting inhabitants of this place.

So, telling himself the reward would be worth the effort, he stepped through the gates and into the bustling streets of Cipheropolis. Immediately, several realizations hit him at once:

Firstly, the place smelled even worse on the inside _._ According to the gatekeepers, indoor plumbing was only available in a handful of districts, most of which had been claimed by those wealthy enough to own private armies, leaving everyone else reliant on crudely-dug latrine pits – or, for the exceptionally impoverished, buckets. Add to that the fact that corpses were usually left where they lay until the pig farmers came for them, and most of the clean water sources were owned by the gangs, and the entire city _reeked_ of shit and blood and decomposing flesh, all roasting merrily in the sun.

Secondly, the sheer number of people was nothing short of staggering: there had to be over ten thousand people passing through this street at any given time, and this was just the people passing by the gates – reportedly a deeply unpopular part of the city, according to the guards on patrol. Beyond, in the narrow byways and canyon-like boulevards, the crowds marched a million strong, untold multitudes of human beings scurrying back and forth across the city in search of whatever they needed to scratch out a living in this hellish metropolis. Merchants, blacksmiths, carpenters, pickpockets, gong-farmers, beggars, prostitutes, weavers, mercenaries, labourers, guards, scavengers, priests, gangsters, drunks, musicians, dancers, acrobats, actors and entertainers of every stripe, along with dozens upon dozens of refugees just hoping to live long enough to find homes and jobs of their own. Mutants, too, made their homes here, with dozens of figures amongst the horde earmarked by the telltale signs of Weirdness-induced distortion: beastly faces peered from under hoods; tentacles wriggled in uncooperative sleeves; inside-out figures left a trail of bloody footprints on the cobblestones as they hobbled, whimpering, through the streets; old men walked in the bodies of children, leading their now-senile grandchildren around in terrified desperation. Shifty, who'd spent most of the last thirty years either alone or in the company of no more than four human beings at a time, found himself almost overwhelmed by the immensity of the crowds roaming the streets.

Thirdly, the streets themselves were almost impossible to navigate, partly due to the crowds but mostly due to the fact that civic planning hadn't been highest on the list of priorities while building this rathole of a city. The sheer number of streets, avenues, walkways, boulevards, alleyways, and ladder streets branching outwards from the gate was beyond counting, and the fact that someone had actually bothered to put up street signs beggared belief. There'd be no chance of Shifty ever finding his way to the rendezvous point in all this: fortunately, after searching a nearby alley for corpses with gold teeth, Shifty had enough in his pockets to hire a guide.

His guide, a shrunken, trembling little man with goat hooves instead of fingernails, obediently led him on a meandering path across the city that would supposedly lead them to the Rallying Flag. Along the way, the guide helpfully provided him with an overview of the city's current conditions, and though Shifty wasn't interested in most of it, he allowed the mutant to ramble on for as long as necessary – if only because ripping his head off might draw undue attention.

According to the guide, Cipheropolis had little in the way of official government: as the name implied, Bill Cipher owned the city and maintained the rights to seize control at any time he pleased, though he had little interest in doing so. As such, the city was "managed" in his absence by a loose alliance of gangs and hard men, most of whom only remained at peace because none of them wanted to lose their status to a gang war. The city guards were on the payroll of these gangs, and all citizens living within the districts under their control paid regular tribute in the form of anything they desired.

Technically, the city had a mayor, but he was little more than a holdover from the city's last official attempt to create a proper government, and mainly served as the official mouthpiece of the gangs. Of course, the mouthpiece proved only intermittently effective in quelling the temperament of the populace: rioting was common around here, though it rarely did anything to spur a change in leadership. The gangs made their homes in the black towers that crowned the city, and thanks to a mixture of natural defences and well-maintained garrisons, most of them were almost unassailable. Instead, all the riots did was inspire another brutal crackdown by the guards. In fact, these regular massacres were probably the only reason why Cipheropolis still had any living space left within its walls, along with epidemics of cholera, monster attacks, and the occasional visit from a slumming Henchmaniac.

Starvation was another popular cause of death around here, for food and drink were also under the control of the gangs: pork, fresh fruit, canned food, chocolate, butter, pastries, good wine, cold beer, clean drinking water and even electric refrigeration were strictly the domain of the new ruling class. Those who couldn't afford the asking price for old-world goodies like these were forced to make do with the city's everyday fare – namely dogs, rats, fungi, moss, recycled water, and moonshine.

Lots and lots of moonshine, which didn't help the mood of the citizenry.

Shifty did his best to maintain human form and avoid losing his temper as the journey continued, but it wasn't easy: the crowd seemed to press in on him from all angles, threatening to crush him in a vast compacting cube of loathsome human flesh, and the stench of unwashed bodies came dangerously close to smothering him. More than once, he felt human hands rifling through his pockets, and he almost lashed out in rage before remembering his cover (and the fact that he didn't have anything in said pockets to begin with). His mood only worsened as the hours ticked by and their progress across the city grew ever more laborious. True, the guide avoided most of the nastier alleyways and automatically steered them away from any gang patrols likely to demand tribute, but they still ended up bumping into no less than three barroom brawls that had spilled into the street, forcing them to take a hasty detour – lest they end up getting caught in the inevitable guard crackdown.

In the end, most of the journey was a blur, a tangle of makeshift shopfronts, crude factories and gateways to richer districts. In fact, the only part of it that Shifty remembered in any detail was the place known to all as Preacher's Pass.

All forms of religious worship in Cipheropolis revolved entirely around Bill, as demonstrated by the colossal Pyramid Shrine lurking at the centre of the city; all other forms of worship were strictly forbidden – laws such as these being enforced by the occasional lightning bolt from the Fearamid. However, in Bill's absence, the law had grown lax with nobody to enforce it, and an improvised temple of priests, preachers and mystics had sprouted in one of the larger boulevards; some were even acquiring a congregation – though given the sheer scope of Bill's powers, how they maintained their faith was anyone's guess. Believing that Cipher had lost interest in them, the gangs permitted the preachers to continue their public worship.

As Shifty quickly discovered, this was easily the most colourful part of the entire city, not to mention the noisiest.

Standing at improvised pulpits positioned on both sides of the street, the priests gathered in droves, haranguing passers-by and addressing the followers they'd gathered so far. For good measure, most of them were quite evidently on the more extreme side. Shifty hadn't had too much experience with human religion outside of the textbooks he'd leafed through all those years ago, but he had the distinct impression that the believers gathered here today didn't represent any mainstream faith found in the world prior to Weirdmageddon.

In the end, he could only watch in bewilderment as the spectacle washed over him, and listen to the cacophony of calls to worship.

"Hallowed are the Ori! Hallowed be those who Ascend to join them!"

"Aten, Aten, Aten, Aten, Aten…"

"The Drowned Man gives no promises to us, my friends! He gives us only lessons!"

"Let me show you an endless trail of sunsets!"

"Hail Columbia! Hail the almighty Archangel who gives sight to the Prophets!"

"Follow the light to the end of the tunnel, and step into the dawn of the Ravenous Sun!"

"Listen to the wisdom of Tzeentch, for he is the Changer of Ways! He charts the course of Fate!"

"These are your bodies, which shall be given unto us. This is our insight, which shall be given unto you…"

"Join us, brothers and sisters! Walk the Black Spiral, and embrace the strength of the Wyrm!"

"For the night is dark and full of terrors!"

"Praise be to Sutekh! Praise be to he who leads us to freedom from the tyrannous Aeons! Praise be to his greatest servants, they who bear his gift of blood in eternity!"

"We will be reborn in the black womb of the endless void!"

"These are the words of the Beast. And he is woken. He is the heart who beats in the darkness. He is the blood that will never cease. And now he will rise."

"Let Papa Nurgle comfort you in your sorrows, my children!"

"Hearken! Hearken! Listen to the Boiling Meme, for he, _he_ is the messenger of the Lucid Dreamers! The Boiling Meme beams of the Stars That Scream! The Dreamers approach! Eat, lest ye be eaten, for the dark teems with Eaters!"

"Beware, for the Horsemen ride! Death has claimed his mantle and now seeks the scythe and the scales and the sword and the crown! It is as it was once prophesied! Look to Revelation, my friends!"

And most disturbingly of all, some of these preachers appeared to be performing miracles. The pallid-looking oddball in the rough-spun habit who'd been hollering about the Ori now stood with his arms outstretched, and all around him, objects were slowly rising into the air of their own accord.

And was it his imagination, or was that a humanoid figure forming in the flames behind him?

The guide quickly led him away, and frankly, Shifty couldn't blame him: after all, if these oddments had real supernatural powers, it probably wouldn't be too long before one of them ending up starting a fight with the other preachers – to say nothing of what might happen if _Bill_ ever found out what was going on here.

* * *

The Rallying Flag Hotel, as it turned out, was little more than a ramshackle husk of a building just across from the newest tent city; according to the guide, it had once been a rather spirited attempt to construct a seven-story building with 21st-century building materials and machines, but a fire had broken out in the last week of construction, and attempts to repair the damage had been abandoned once it was discovered that the gangs were skimming resources for their own projects. Two long years onwards, it was an abandoned ruin, a barely-furnished maze of dusty corridors and mouldering rooms crowned with a blackened mess of half-melted scaffolding and charred timbers – the remains of the seventh floor.

Oddly enough, no squatters made their home here: despite space being highly prized in the crowded city beyond, nobody dared trespass on the ruined hotel, and even the guide couldn't explain why. All he knew was that _something_ seemed to actively frighten people away from the front doors. By now, the usual rumours surrounded the place, most claiming that it was haunted, others hinting that a monster had made its lair inside the lobby, and some suggested that it had become the secret headquarters of an up-and-coming gang; a few even claimed that Bill Cipher himself had taken on a human form and now lived in one of the abandoned suites. Of course, Shifty had no interest in rumours and ghost-stories; after all, it wasn't as if _Mabel_ would be dissuaded by the tall tales surrounding this place.

Despite the guide's best efforts to dissuade him, he pushed the front doors open with a tortured squeal of rusting hinges and marched indoors. For good measure, he also seized the guide bythe scruff of his neck and dragged him into the hotel along with him, if only as petty vengeance for talking every step of the journey. But to their mutual surprise, the lobby was brightly lit and almost unnaturally clean; true, the place was still pretty dilapidated, with rotten floorboards, water-damaged walls, torn-out carpets and a front desk that looked to be in the process of collapsing in on itself, but the fact that there were working electric lights and not a trace of dust to be found set alarm bells ringing in the back of Shifty's brain.

Either someone was living here, or someone had prepared this place in advance.

And then, on the rotting front desk, a lone TV set clicked on. Of course, there was no picture, only static – there'd been nothing broadcast in this part of the world since Weirdmageddon had comeand gone. But against all expectations, a voice could be heard amidst the white noise.

" **Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss-I am the Boiling Meme-let me in."**

There was a pause. Then, as the sound quality slowly improved, the bubbling voice from the set murmured, **"Hiya, Shifty."**

"What the _hell?"_ Shifty muttered.

" **Hell,"** chortled the voice. **"More than Hell and Hell alone, Shifty. You should know that there's more frightening things than that out in the world. We're living proof of that, remember? Monsters walk amongst us, so they say."**

Was it Shifty's imagination, or were faint tendrils of black slime beginning to ooze out of the TV's speakers?

"Who _are_ you?" he whispered.

" **I'm the message. I'm John."**

"That really doesn't tell me much."

" **Nothing ever does, eh, Shifty? You've been kept in the dark for so long, locked away in a closet where they hoped you'd be forgotten 'til the end of time… and you've been kept in the dark in a different way entirely, am I right? There's so many secrets kept from you, so many things you want to know the answers to, but the world keeps holding back. So unfair-unfair-unfair."**

"…how did you know that? How do you know so much about me?"

" **I know everything now. The electronic eyes of humanity have been blinded, but that doesn't mean I can't use them. But then, we've met before."**

"Oh really?"

" **Yes. You saw how I gatecrashed the party at Camp Acheron - well, a part of me, at least."**

Against all expectations, something at the back of Shifty's mind sparked in recognition. _Camp Acheron?_ Where had he heard that name before?

He gave himself a little shake, and did his best to ignore the feeling of déjà vu. "No offence," he continued, "but I think I'd remember meeting you, John. I mean, it's kind of hard to forget being talked at by a TV Set."

John laughed, and Shifty came to two very disturbing realizations: first, the black slime oozing from the TV's speakers was indeed real; secondly, it was beginning to form a thick puddle of thick, tarry gunk under the set… a puddle that appeared to be moving of its own accord along the front desk. Something about this stuff seemed worryingly familiar, and every instinct in Shifty's body told him not to let it touch him.

" **You've forgotten more than you could possibly know, Shifty,"** said John. **There's more being hidden from you than you could ever imagine. I know exactly how that feels, Shifty; I know what it's like to be manipulated. Let's be friends. You and me against the world, Shifty. Everyone needs friends, and I have better friends than anyone in the multiverse – friends who dine on quantum foam and feast on stars."**

The puddle was inching steadily closer now, pouring off the edge of the desk and slopping onto the floor with a distressingly animate motion. Were those tentacles starting to form in the slime? Were those flickering lights in the blackness just reflections, or were they _eyes?_

"Ahaha," Shifty laughed mirthlessly, and realized with a thrill of embarrassment that he was instinctively edging away from the growing pool of gunk.

By contrast, the guide remained as he had for the last few minutes: frozen in place, staring uncomprehendingly at the advancing mass of fluid.

Shifty cleared his throat, and tried again. "Thanks but no thanks," he said, trying not to let his nervousness show. "I'm fine with being alone for the time being."

" **Suit yourself. Can't blame me for having fun."**

 _Does that mean he's going to kill me or let me go?_

" **I suppose we'll speak again, when you've had time to think on what you really are. But don't think too long: witnesses pile up quickly around here. Oh, and speaking of which…"**

"Oh dear God, no," whimpered the guide, his eyes suddenly lighting up in terrified realization.

There was a high-pitched whine from the TV, one that rose higher and higher still until it became inaudible to human hearing – and eventually, any range of hearing that Shifty could replicate. And then, without warning, the guide let out a scream and flung himself as hard as he could at the nearest wall. He struck head-on, collapsed to the ground, hauled himself upright, and then proceeded to viciously and repeatedly headbutt the wall with a series of loud wet _crunching_ sounds. In the end, the man's skull caved in long before the wall did.

" **That's better,"** John sighed. **"No more prying eyes. I'm needed elsewhere, now. You keep out of trouble, now. Just remember: you are** _ **all**_ **made of stars."**

"What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?"

" **Can't you tell? _They're right above your eyes._ See ya, Shifty."**

And with a parting gurgle of impossibly-deep laughter, the TV switched itself off, leaving the black ooze to evaporate from the floor – and at long last leaving Shifty alone in the lobby.

* * *

A few miles away from the turgid depths of the city, a lone ship ground to a halt on the shores of the Nightmare Coast, disgorging a small army of twisted-looking creatures onto the brutal sands.

Their captain was the last to leave the ship. Still shrouded in the same rags that had concealed her advancing mutations since her time in the mountains, her face was almost invisible, but it was impossible to miss the way her eyes flash crimson beneath the hood of her tattered garb. After all, a city such as this could only mean efforts to rebuild, to restore the world to some semblance of its old self; efforts to rebuild represented hope… and hope was something that she could no longer countenance.

So, barking an order to the troops now lumbering into formation, Wendy shouldered her axe and strode wearily up the beach towards the waiting gates of Cipheropolis.

* * *

Gsv glbh szev zoo yvvm yivzprmt uivv  
Zh zoo yfg Yroo xzm xovziob hvv  
Rg'h grnv uli kzgsh gl mld xlmevitv  
Zmw uli gsv svilvh gl vnvitv


	31. Stories Of Convergence

A/N: Owwwwww.

It's been a rather painful month, ladies and gentlemen. I can only apologise for the delay, and make up for lost time. Admittedly, it didn't help that I wasn't satisfied with anything in this chapter, and it took a lot of twiddling before I was ready to publish it. In the meantime, I'd like to thank everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed.

To the unsigned guest review from "The Long-Winded Fan," thanks so much! To answer your question, the hooks and barbs of the throne are still embedded in Pacifica's doll body. She can't feel pain, no; instead, Pacifica has to deal with two very different problems: first of all, the powers she gains throne should allow her to make herself human with a little training, but doing so will subject her to the full range of agony she'd experience as a human with multiple puncture wound. Secondly, she can't feel pain... but she is fully aware of the presence of the hooks in her body, and this proves _immensely_ disconcerting if Pacifica focuses on it. The best comparison I can make is getting a local anaesthetic for a wisdom tooth operation: you can't feel the pain of what's being done to your teeth, but you can dimly feel that your teeth are being drilled, split open and pulled. Pacifica can't feel the pain, but she can feel the hooks digging in and scraping against her bones. Meanwhile, I can't reveal everything about Stan and Ford, but they both serve as a means of lessoning the madness: Stan helps keep Ford anchored to sanity in the wake of his transformation, while Ford's knowledge of the process allows him to help Stan with all the little side-effects of his own transformation. As for the crossover elements, I'm doing my best to use only a few cameo appearances unless they have a specific role to play in demonstrating the ongoing collapse of dimensional barriers. As always, it's a tightrope walk between expanding the universe and crowding it.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine, and none of the other references made over the course of the chapter belong to me.

* * *

 **DZIMRMT: Ivhlofgrlm Hlow Hvkzizgvob**

* * *

Wendy had not expected this.

In all the time she'd spent roaming the wastelands with the rest of the Society, she'd never once seen this many people gathered together in one place without it being infested with monsters and kept in line through Weirdness. But this was no playground: despite the name, despite the "Garden" of tormented friends and strangers on display outside, this Cipheropolis was very much a human city. Yes, it had been made by Bill and now existed for his amusement, but it was a place where humans could govern themselves, live their lives as they saw fit, and suffer with only barest interference from Bill.

She was even more surprised when the guards at the gate had actually opened the gates to her, actually allowed them all inside without batting an eyelid at the sight of the Society. Once they'd realized that none of them were carrying trade goods or weapons, they'd just waved them through and left it at that. "No entrance tolls here," they grunted disinterestedly. "This ain't that kind of city. Besides, you'll need to save your pennies for food and tribute."

The Preacher, being the Preacher, had attempted to issue a stirring sermon on the pointlessness of striving and the desperate need to force Bill to bring about their extinction. Not only had the guards responded with little more than boredom, but one of them had actually gone so far as to shove the shark-mouthed Acolyte of the Deep through the gates.

"Move on, you," he'd grumbled. "You're holding up the traffic. You wanna damage people's eardrums? Do it in Preacher's Pass, and maybe they'll throw you a few cents change, for all the good it'll do ya."

And now that they were all inside, Wendy could tell that the Society's usual approach wasn't going to work: even with all the recruiting drives they'd carried out, there were still only about fifty of them – the wasteland had done its part in whittling them down despite their best efforts. For all their strength, they couldn't take on a whole city. For now, they'd have to abide by the rules of this disgusting place, at least as long as there were still those among the Society who weren't immune to small arms fire.

Wendy sighed deeply, idly plucking a 45 calibre bullet from the vortices of scar tissue haloing her collarbone. It wouldn't have been much of an exaggeration to say that she'd been shot more times than she'd had hot dinners in the last few months; next to the preacher, she was the most obvious target, and it was probably only due to her growing powers that she'd avoided an extremely messy death – in spite of her desires to the contrary. Sometimes it struck her as odd that she insisted on continuing with her self-imposed mission despite her need to put an end to the torture, but ultimately, it was the only sane option: the world needed to know of her cure for the torment.

"Mistress?" the Preacher whispered. "What should we do now?"

Wendy thought for a moment. "I want twenty of you to scout the town for food and shelter," she said at last. "Dietrich, you're in charge of 'em; keep to yourself and avoid fighting at all costs. The rest of you, follow me: remain together until we've complete basic reconnaissance. We'll rendezvous back here."

The Society murmured their assent, gathered up into their assigned groups, and began a long, slow march through the streets of Cipheropolis.

Immediately, Wendy realized that security was a lot tighter than it had first appeared: even without the regular patrols, entire platoons of guards could often be found weaving their way through the crowds, easily recognized by their crudely-patched camouflage uniforms and Kevlar vests. Worse still, the gangsters were never far behind, and if anything, they were even better-armed than the guards; from the low-tier thugs in their faux-designer clothing to the bespoke suit-clad gang nobility, all of them were armed with a bewildering arsenal of military-grade firearms – including automatic shotguns and grenade launchers. With every street they passed, another army was on the march, either surveying the crowds for troublemakers or busy claiming "late fees" from anyone who'd made the mistake of lagging behind in their monthly tribute. This was not going to be easy, however the Society tried to tackle the situation at hand.

More unusually, the Society were quite clearly not the only monsters in town: most of the refugees and settlers they'd ran into outside the city had been completely human, or had been mutated so subtly that it was impossible to tell the difference. Inside the walls of Cipheropolis, though, it seemed you couldn't walk ten feet without bumping into a mutant. In the midst of this, Wendy's entourage barely stirred a ripple, least of all among the likes of the Inside-Outers. So far, it seemed most of the city's populace were ambivalent to the mutants: downtrodden to the point of apathy, they accepted them mainly because there was no point in doing otherwise. Besides, most of the mutants ended up homeless just like all the other new arrivals to the city, which, as far as Wendy could tell, was the nearest thing Cipheropolis ever got to equality.

So far, it seemed as though the vagrants were the biggest demographic in the entire city, mostly due to the gangs: with most of the houses already claimed and the flophouses full to capacity, getting a roof over your head depended entirely on earning the favour of the city's unofficial nobility. Some new arrivals had important skills they could offer up; others had looted valuables to trade; a few had even sold themselves into slavery in the hope that it would mean homes for their families. Most had nothing to offer, though, and were forced to sleep wherever they could find shelter: alleyways, doorsteps, sewers, stables, gutters, rooftops, even under cars and carts if they were parked for long enough. In some parts of the city, the homeless supposed gathered in such large numbers that they often blocked the road and had to be cleared away by guards – or run over by carts.

And yet…

They hadn't given up yet. Against all expectations, the citizens of this cesspool of a city somehow persisted in surviving.

Yes, Cipheropolis was a desperate, crime-ridden hellhole held together by violence and apathy. Yes, the people were debtors at the best of time and slaves at the worst. Yes, the sheer number of homicides, suicides and catastrophic accidents would have made a coroner double-take in astonishment. Yes, the medicine was primitive, the food close to toxic, the water swimming with disease and the rat populations at terminal proportions. And yes, it was as all cheap amusement for Bill…

But somehow, this place still clung to a semblance of life. Even when people could barely find a reason to live, they still strove to survive, no matter the cost. It was brutal, inhumane and at times even more dog-eat-dog than the world outside the walls, and few of them were actually expecting anything better in life… but nobody had truly embraced despair. Nobody had learned the truth that Wendy had accepted so long ago.

Yet.

However, the name "Preacher's Pass" had struck a chord somewhere in Wendy's brain, and the more she heard of it from passers-by and the occasional hawker, the more intriguing it sounded. Maybe, if this place was what she suspected it was, there might be a way to gain followers without having to apply force. She'd no illusions of the mission at hand being any easier than a day in the wastelands, but if she could acquire enough followers, perhaps it might be possible – with a little time and effort – to spread her beliefs to the entire city.

And maybe that would be enough to spoils Bill's fun, enough to spark the temper tantrum she'd been waiting for: the moment when Bill would kill them all – wipe them completely from existence – and never bring them back.

In other words, the only victory they could ever hope for.

It took a bit of asking around, but eventually they found directions to Preacher's Pass, though it required them to split into groups of five and disperse into the alleyways in order to avoid the traffic on the streets – except of course for their leader, who travelled alone.

Along the way, Wendy was briefly delayed by muggers: a gang of petty thieves preying on new arrivals travelling through the nastier end of town, they'd obviously assumed that her ragged clothing and spindly frame made her an easy target. They were, in short order, very briefly surprised, quite thoroughly horror-stricken, and then extremely dead.

Hopefully, the locals could find some use for their pulped remains once they were able to scrape the mess off the walls.

Eventually, though, the Society gradually converged in the depths of Preacher's Pass, creeping through the alleyways and emerging amidst the gathered congregations. As expected, the street was jam-packed with people congregating around the unearthly-looking priests and mystics now proclaiming their respective gospels. Less expected was the sheer colour and spectacle of the place: every single pulpit on the street was a miniature kaleidoscope of signposts, idols and banners, each one standing out like a beacon amidst the dull mud bricks of the surrounding buildings. And if the trimmings were colourful, they themselves were nothing compared to the priests themselves, most of whom were wearing some of the most ostentatious robes Wendy had ever seen outside of a Siffy Channel Original.

Listening to these people ranting on, Wendy had a sneaking suspicion that she didn't have much of a chance of getting attention immediately; perseverance would be needed in generous doses. In hindsight, it was just as well she'd found her preacher among the Acolytes of the Deep so long ago, for by now she knew for a fact that she just didn't have the patience for public speaking unless she was in the mood make use of the new range on her mutated larynx.

Once again, violence was not an option. With Bill absent for the time being, the new faiths were allowed to proselytize as much as they liked, but the gangs still insisted that the preachers played by their rules: they would have to pay a weekly fee for use of the Pass, they would be given no support if Bill returned and caught them in the act, and most importantly of all, violence – especially violence between preachers – was strictly forbidden. In fact, it was this final rule (not to mention the gangs' willingness to enforce it via "Willy Pete" if necessary) that kept these various cults and fanatics from tearing each other apart. As long as nobody dared to flaunt the rules, the peace remained. So, for the time being, Wendy would have to toe the line.

This time, though, she and the Society of the Enduring had something new on their side. Up until now, she'd been careful to keep herself hooded and just out of sight while the preacher went to work: after all, to the audience she still looked almost human, and the sight of her tended to spark desperate shouts for aid. The same went for every other member of the Society who still had a few human features to spare. But here, almost every single priest in the area was either hooded, masked, cowled, helmeted or crowned: the weird guy ranting about sunsets and electronic ascendance wore a rubber mask and wraparound shades; the slender woman under the serpent banner kept her face hidden beneath the hood of a thick black mantle – all except for her slit-pupiled green eyes; the tall figure proclaiming the blessings of Tzeentch was crowned with a gold mitre and an almost pharaonic gold mask; even the fat guy preaching a sermon of "the stars that scream" wore a black shroud over his eyes.

For once, Wendy felt no need to follow the crowd. After all, how else would they stand out?

So when they finally found an empty space on the eastern end of the pass, once the Society had formed a protective cordon around their makeshift stage, she threw back her hood and ordered everyone in the Society to do the same. Then, as heads began to turn in their direction, she let the warped organs in her throat spark to life, and bellowed, "PEOPLE OF CIPHEROPOLIS! HEAR US NOW!"

Right on cue, the preacher stepped into position beside her. "Heed our words, friends, for we are here to bring you the truth! You may think you labour to build a better future; you may think that this city may one day be the start of a prosperous new civilization; you may even think you suffer with purpose. In truth, you struggle in vain."

"This is all there is," Wendy intoned, her warped vocal chords shaking dust from windowsills. "This is all that will ever be. This is all Bill allows us. But there is another way…"

Slowly but surely, people were beginning to trickle towards them from all angles. And in spite of herself, Wendy almost smiled; bit by bit, they were making the message heard. With luck, time, and more than a little bit of perspiration, perhaps this city could be the one chance of spoiling Bill's fun – and bringing down the final temper tantrum on their heads.

 _Please,_ she thought – almost prayed. _Let it be enough. Let it end. Let it end. Let it end…_

* * *

"Try again."

Gideon closed his eyes, and sent out a tiny pulse of psychic awareness rippling outwards across the surrounding area.

At once, he could tell that he was surrounded by an honour guard of ten diligent sentinels, including Amanda. The pulse travelled a little further, and he could soon recognize the medical section, a dozen or so strong-backed men and women armed with wheelchairs, gurneys and (in extreme cases) wheelbarrows, all charged with towing around those too sick and wounded to walk on their own; Gideon's parents were among the patients here, mom still too unstable to cope without her vacuum cleaner, dad still drifting in and out of consciousness; also, much of the haul from the weapons cache had been hidden among the patients, strapped to the underside of carts and wheelchairs as it was. And behind them, the two hundred and twenty desperate refugees on the march, slowly marching away from the bloodied beach and the hallucinogenic patchwork lurking just uphill from it. All of them, from the honour guard to the bulk, were still following the same course they'd been following for the last few months.

The road to nowhere, for all intents and purposes.

Gideon's developing powers had been able to steer them away from roaming packs of monsters, and his increasingly noticeable experiments in telepathy had given them hope, but nothing in the world could change the fact that they were flying blind – being funnelled in one specific direction by forces beyond their control. Gideon had no idea where they were headed or why, or even what might happen when they reached the end of this road; so far, the only consolation at hand was that their course wasn't being directed by Bill… not _consciously_ at any rate.

So, for the time being, Gideon focussed on the matter at hand, on studying his powers – and through them, the refugees that followed him. Even with his eyes closed, even with his mind still locked in communication with Jheselbraum, he could sense all of them and much more. He could sense the surrounding wildlife – the exoskeletal jackals sulking on the edge of the path, the vultures perched in the trees, the horseflies buzzing around sunburnt faces… animal minds were far easier to sense, their drives and instincts far simpler to deal with than human thoughts. He could even control beasts such as these, their primitive thoughts easily bowing to telepathic suggestions, hence why the refugees had remained undisturbed by monsters for most of the journey. However, controlling animals wasn't the purpose of this exercise, nor was controlling humans – for Jheselbraum had made it abundantly clear that telepathically manipulating the human mind was a definite no-no and only to be used as a last resort (hence why she'd refused to teach it for the time being).

No, today's exercise was far more intricate and involved. Now that he could sense the minds around him, with just a little bit of effort…

Suddenly, he was seeing the world through Amanda's eyes, looking down at his own body slumped in her arms; then he was a hundred feet in the air and scanning the horizon through the eyes of a hawk; then he was all the way at the back of the refugee column, glancing nervously at the hungry jackals sniffing their trail; he was peering through the compound eyes of a fly, immediately confronted with several dozen different perspectives on the same man's hairy nostrils; he was every one of them and he was himself, seeing through almost four hundred different sets of eyes. And then the other sensations began pouring in: sound, smell, touch, taste, pleasure, pain…

And with a flash of light-

And a word-

And a song-

"That's enough."

But Gideon was still flying too high, still riding the amassed sensations of several hundred weary, starving, adoration-crazed minds, gliding across the acrid desert faster and further than mere flesh could carry him. The sensory input was beyond intoxicating – it was _transcendent._ So many hopes and dreams had been focussed on him, it was almost impossible for Gideon to define it all: there were those who thought of him as an alien messiah, those who believed he was a young god in the making, those who claimed that he was the personification of all humanity's virtues and sin, those who worshipped him as a living saint, those who believed that he had been personally forgiven and blessed by God… and of course, there were those who had no special beliefs at all, and simply believed because _Gideon was all they had left._ The sheer force of hope, faith and desperation rose like a tsunami from the depths of the surrounding minds, sweeping over his mind's eye in an all-consuming mass of frenzied thoughts-

"Gideon, _stop,"_ Jheselbraum said, her voice suddenly ice-cold.

Reeling at the sound of the voice in his ear, Gideon hastily cut the connection, withdrawing his psychic links back into himself. Having tried this exercise many times before, he knew all too well how easy it would be to get lost in the sensations of others, but this was the first time the sheer volume of experiences had nearly overwhelmed him. Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes to find himself once again in the ethereal non-space of the communication amulet; as expected, Jheselbraum was looking down at him, a look of concern in all seven of her eyes.

"You have to learn to exercise restraint, Gideon," she said gently. "You needn't cast your net too wide – not now, at any rate: seeing through too many eyes at once can easily burn out the mind of a novice psychic."

"I thought we were trying to escalate my training."

"There is a world of difference between training and destruction. Besides, you've already mastered the art of psychic radar; there's little point in teaching you to see through more than two hundred eyes at once, not before you've developed your stamina further."

"Then what was the _point_ of all that?"

Jheselbraum smiled. "Did you notice anything unusual at the very moment you tapped into the other sensory experiences? You recall a flash of light, correct?"

"Yes, I…" Gideon's eyes narrowed. "And I saw something… and _heard_ something too – a song. Why did I hear music? There wasn't any music playing back in the crowd, and I don't think anyone had anything that could _play_ it either. So how could I have heard music?"

"You didn't," said Jheselbraum simply. "The reason why I had you push yourself to the limits of psychic radar again was to see if your senses were ready to transcend perception of the purely physical. What you saw was a miniscule glimpse of a possible future."

There was a pause, as Gideon slowly digested this.

"You mean… I can see the future now?" he exclaimed, suddenly almost erupting with excitement.

"Only at a beginner's level, and only with my support: you're still not ready to forecast unassisted, not yet. And besides, even if you did regularly push yourself to the limits of your psychic perceptions, you would only experience split-second visions."

"And that's all?"

"For now. You may also experience a certain degree of subconscious intuition surrounding what you saw, images and sounds out in the real world calling to you on some level. My advice for you would be to follow your hunches when you experience them: in my experience, the visions will usually be related to something important – something that might very well save your life. Now, tell me, what was the song you heard?"

Gideon wracked his brain for a moment, trying to recall the snippet of lyric he'd heard, almost humming the tune. _Coming through… that girl is you…_

 _Wait, WHAT?_

"Disco Girl?!" he said at last. "A Babba song is supposed to save my life?"

"If that's what you heard…"

"How exactly is some helium-voiced europop top-of-the-charts crap going to save _anything?"_

"That's up for you to decide. Now, what about the image you saw alongside the music?"

"…I think it was a sign. Two words. They're still pretty hazy, but I think the first word began with an R and ended with a G. An –ing word. And the second… the second was _definitely_ "flag." So I'm supposed to be looking for a place called the R-something-ing Flag, is that it?"

"That depends. Did you encounter any sense of danger around what you saw, any ominous hunches?"

"I don't _think_ so. In fact, all I could feel was this weird sense of anticipation and… familiarity, almost like someone I knew lived there. This sense of… togetherness. Does that mean it's safe?"

"Safe is a relative term, given the current circumstances. But yes, if you sensed no potential threat, it's likely a very good chance that you will be safe there, once you've dealt with your objectives there."

"My _objectives?_ What's that supposed to mean, exactly? I thought we didn't have any objectives other than 'stay alive and master psychic powers!' I mean, you _know_ the future: can't you just explain what's going to happen to us?"

"I know _possible_ futures. An oracle can direct the course of history down a certain path, but the future is always in motion: the slightest mistake can change everything. Just look at the Zodiac. The more I tell you, the more complicated your instructions become; the more complicated the instructions become, the greater the chances of a mistake; and if a mistake occurs, everything I tell you could be invalidated – one of the many reasons why oracles tend to speak in riddles." A look of pain rippled across her face. "The other reasons… aren't so pleasant."

"So it's up to me?"

Once again, Jheselbraum only smiled mysteriously. "Just as it is to everyone else in the multiverse," she said. "The future you hope to reach is one out of an infinite number of potential destinations. As a seer-in-training, it's up to you to chart a course through all the possibilities and, where necessary, control the variables in person. The vision you've received is a signpost on the road, something that might point you in the right direction. For all we know, it may be enough, but for now… I think that's enough for today."

And then…

Gideon blinked, eyes instantly tearing as real daylight poured down on him for the first time in what felt like days. Once again unfettered by Jheselbaum's powers, the thoughts of others rained down on him, until at last he'd recovered enough sense of self to gradually filter them out.

"Where are we?" he croaked.

Amanda looked around uncertainly. "I'm not sure, but… it _looks_ like a city. A proper walled city, complete with skyscrapers." She wrinkled her nose. "I mean, I haven't seen one in months, but I'm pretty sure they didn't use to smell of vintage corpses and sun-ripened dog crap."

"Uggh. I noticed. Set me down and I'll take a look for myself."

Amanda obligingly lowered Gideon to the ground, allowing him an unhindered glimpse of the ramshackle walls ahead of them. It took almost a full minute for his eyes to adjust to the unforgiving desert sunlight, especially given that the sky was fogged with sickly white clouds that on made the glare seem a thousand times harsher, and when the first side of the architectural monstrosity before him finally seeped into view, Gideon had to admit that it _definitely_ hadn't been worth the wait. In fact, if it hadn't been dotted with manned guard towers, he would have probably mistaken it for another ruin; after all, billboards and truck wheels weren't generally considered traditional building materials when it came to walls. Even the crudely-painted sign above the gates – the one that proclaimed "WELCOME TO CIPHEROPOLIS" – only seemed to make the scenery even more uninviting.

And as for the buildings behind it…

"Hell," Gideon muttered. "This isn't a city, it's a car-crash set on pause. How are we supposed to find what we're looking for in all _this?"_

"We're looking for something specific now?"

There was a pause, as logic finally caught up with Gideon.

"Oh, right," he said at last. "I keep forgetting you can't actually _hear_ my conversations with Jheselbraum. Look, it's like this: we're looking for a place called the 'Flag.' The R-something-Ing Flag, specifically. Apparently, we'll be safe there once we've finished our objectives there, whatever that's supposed to mean."

"So you really _are_ a prophet all of a sudden?"

Once upon a time, Gideon would have happily bellowed his newfound status from every rooftop in town, and probably have it emblazoned on all his posters and commercials just for good measure. But the last few months had been nothing if not humbling, and after the psychic run-in with his own unpleasantness, he'd learned the hard way just how soul-rending his own megalomania had been. So instead, he found himself mumbling sheepishly, "Well… I'm learning, I guess."

"So that's the only clue we've got to go on? This flag place – and the fact that it might be somewhere in the city?"

Gideon considered mentioning the Babba song, but after some consideration, decided that it would probably push the suspension of disbelief a little too far. "'Fraid so," he said at last. "Sorry," he added – though he wasn't entirely sure why.

"Oh, don't be. I mean, it's not as if we've got any better ideas on what to do next, is it? Besides, we've got to get these people to shelter at some point. Speaking of which, I think we've finally got someone's attention." She pointed up at a gantry at the top of the nearest end of the wall, where a guard was staring down at them. In one hand, he held a megaphone; the other remained at holster-level.

Gideon allowed himself to sink into the background as Amanda went about introducing themselves to the guards, and soon found himself drifting back into the depths of the crowd, who were by now almost overwhelmed with joy at the sight of the ramshackle-looking city. Many of them thanked him as he crept past; some shook his hand, or bowed to him; a few even asked for his blessing, believing that his word could keep them safe from harm. For his part, Gideon could only mumble the odd reply here and there, trying not to let the fear show on his face: he was used to people showing him with praise and adoration by now, having experienced so much of it back in Gravity Falls, but this was something very different. These days, his audience was far more impassioned and far more serious, and with every mile they travelled, their adulation seemed to grow all the more spectacular; in astral form, Gideon could ride that wave of appreciation and let it intoxicate him just as he had back when he was still just a conman, but when dealing with it in the flesh, he found it terrifyingly burdensome.

By now, he wasn't even afraid of being overthrown by the mob; no, what disturbed him was that he'd once again gotten almost exactly what he'd wanted… and it wasn't at all how he'd envisioned it. He had power, he had worshippers, maybe even the beginnings of an army if they ever got a chance to train themselves in use of their new weapons… and he'd no idea what the hell he was going to do with any of it. And ever since he'd had that first encounter with his own empathy, the proximity to his old desires had only felt a thousand times more disturbing…

There was a rumble from the gate; a moment later, Amanda appeared beside him. "It seems we don't have to worry about paying to get in," she said. "They're letting just about anyone through the gates so long as they can work. Bad news is, we might all end up homeless; space is at a premium in there, by the sounds of things."

"That shouldn't be much of a problem, not once we've found this flag place, wherever it is-"

"Already done. According to the guards, there's an abandoned hotel in town called the Rallying Flag. Apparently, even the gangs are scared of it: nobody's touched the place since it was first cleared out, not even the homeless."

 _In other words, it's the perfect place for us to stay. And yet…_

Gideon thought for a moment; somewhere in the back of his head, alarm bells were ringing for attention. Maybe it was just his imagination, but it felt as though there was something important that needed to be done elsewhere in the city, something that he couldn't quite put his finger on. No matter how hard he tried to identify the source of the hunch, all he could hear was the sound of that godawful Babba song.

"Is there a marketplace elsewhere in town?" he asked.

"The guards told me that there's one set up just south of Preacher's Pass. From what I hear, they're selling just about everything from pickled rats to scavenged electronics. What were you thinking of getting?"

 _Come on, Gideon, think. Are you really going to drag the entire group on a wild goose chase to some flea market in search of a vendor who may or may not be carrying around a few europop albums?_

"…I think we should send everyone onwards to the hotel," he said at last, as the gates slowly trundled open ahead of them. "Make sure mom, dad and the rest of the sick are looked after. You can come with me: I've got some business at the markets today…"

But there was something else to consider, wasn't there? Gideon thought for a moment, briefly mulling over the other things he'd seen – and felt – while in the midst of his precognitive episode. _Trust your hunches. What might that sense of familiarity mean?_

"Also, there's one other thing we need to do," he added. "While they're on their way through the city, I want the others to ask around and see if anyone in town's seen or heard any of the following individuals: Dipper Pines, Mabel Pines, Soos Ramirez, Fiddleford McGucket…"

* * *

Mabel's jaw very slowly dropped open.

Up until a minute ago, they'd been travelling across a stretch of dunes just uphill from a vast crystalline shore of catatonic bodies and beached shipwrecks. Up until a moment ago, all five of them hadn't thought much of this place: after all, by Bill's standards, weird oceans and inescapable paralysis was practically vanilla, and though none of them had been able to do anything to rouse the unfortunate victims from their torpor, this wasn't exactly out of the ordinary by now. "Just another day in the World Gone Weird," as Preston sometimes put it, if he was feeling in a talkative mood. For a while, Mabel had thought this was going to be just another stepping stone in the trail, something she'd forget about unless they had to stay for a while and forage for food again – not impossible, given that they were down to their last three cans of baked beans.

Now, though… now there was a distant shape on the horizon that looked uncannily like a city. Mabel couldn't be sure, especially since she hadn't seen anything close to a real city since she'd left Mabeland, but it was hard to call it anything else. After all, that strange shape on the horizon had walls _and_ skyscrapers; what else could she call it _but_ a city?

But that wasn't what had really gotten her attention: the city was just a background element, something to focus on later. Here and now, what had effectively kidnapped her mind was the spectacle unfolding in the foreground: directly ahead of her, the air was clouded with floating portals, flickering tears in the sky like holes torn in butcher paper. And through these portals, Mabel could see-

A glimpse of Grenda's screaming face flickered in and out of view, accompanied by distorted shots of her shattered friends and loved ones scattered across the floor; and not too far away, another portal displayed Candy sobbing weakly as a duo of lumbering metallic figures in surgical smocks slowly hauled her onto a gurney; even with the hazy edges of the portal in the way, there was no mistaking the vicious array of instruments waiting for her, or the syringe slowly zeroing in on Candy's jugular.

For a split-second, Mabel could only stare in disbelief. Then, she flung herself at the nearest portal – this one less than four feet off the ground and opening to the playground where Candy was being kept. She had no idea what she was doing or what she was going to do when she finally reached her destination; her mind was empty save for the desperate need to reach Candy before the gurney reached the edge of the portal. And as the adrenaline rippled through her bloodstream, her powers flared to life almost entirely of their own accord: time slowed to a crawl, then shuddered to a halt, leaving the helpless victim and the surgical robots frozen in mid-step towards the gurney as Mabel closed in on them. At the last moment, she leapt out, hoping that she could somehow snatch Candy out of the portal before time started up again; but instead of finding herself in another playground, Mabel simply phased clean through the portal and landed with a crash in the dirt on the other side.

A moment, she was on her feet and gearing up for another charge. But then she felt Pacifica's hand on her shoulder; by now, the little doll had well and truly mastered the art of levitation, and was capable of using it so quickly and stealthily that even Mabel couldn't help but jump in surprise. Even more surprising was the unexpected fact that she couldn't escape Pacifica's grip: either her porcelain hands were stronger than she looked, or she was holding her in place with telekinesis.

"Mabel, you need to stop," said Pacifica urgently, concern evident in every word she spoke. "Just take a deep breath and-"

"No, I can still save her!"

"Mabel, listen to me-"

"She's there! _She's right there!_ I can save Candy, and I can save Grenda, and I can save everyone else and _everything will be okay!"_

Struggling free from Pacifica's grasp, Mabel once again launched herself at the nearest portal, but before she could get within arm's reach of it – or use her powers or anything else that might have made a difference – an invisible lasso of force tightened around her waist and hauled her back to Pacifica's side.

"LET ME GO!" she howled.

"Not until you listen to what I have to say."

"JUST LET ME DO THIS! _IT'S MY FAULT THEY'RE HERE!"_

Pacifica sighed deeply. "Mabel, we talked about this already: Weirdmageddon was not your fault, no matter what Bill or the Henchmaniacs think. If Grenda and Candy are being tortured, the only one to blame here is _Bill_."

"But-"

"But _nothing._ You need to listen to me, Mabel. We can't do anything to help them. I've tried the portals with telekinesis: they aren't real. They're just here to shock travellers like us, and if Grenda and Candy really are…" Pacifica took a deep, shuddering breath, composure briefly slipping for a moment. "If they really are being tortured," she continued shakily, "we can't do anything about it right now. They're out of reach. For now, we need to focus on the bigger picture: we're running low on supplies, we're all tired, and we've got two very real and very sick people who need our help. Also, one pig who cares for you very deeply."

She gestured helpfully to a hillock of sand a few yards away, where Mr and Mrs Northwest looked on in confusion – Preston anxiously clinging to his ex-wife's hand and all but hiding behind her, Priscilla's face still locked in the same expression of terrified bemusement it had remained frozen in ever since her Quaalude stash had run dry. Beside them, Waddles sat in silence, piggy little eyes blinking uncomprehendingly – though even at this distance, Mabel didn't have to imagine the look of concern on his snouted face.

"Once we've found food and shelter, we can try to find Grenda and Candy," said Pacifica gently. "We can find all of them: Dipper, your Grunkles, and everyone else, but we can't do it here and now. I'm sorry, really, but… that's just the way things are."

Mabel took a deep breath. By now, the panic and desperation was fading, replaced by an all-too-familiar sense of despair. "I know," she whispered, blinking away tears.

"And you know it's not your fault, right?"

"I know," Mabel lied.

"Then let's go. Whatever you do, don't look back, okay?"

Slowly but surely, the five of them began shambling away from the portals and onto a rough dirt track leading them towards the city. Eventually, the sound of distant sobs and screams began fading away on the breeze, until at last they'd left the Garden behind them.

Mabel – desperate to take her mind off the nightmare playing out behind them – couldn't help but wonder at just how much Pacifica had changed since the two of them had been separated back in the Fearamid. Before then, she'd been _much_ more of a snob, even when they'd been building the Shacktron. Yes, the end of their night at the minigolf course had proved that she was pretty handy in a crisis, and yes, the Northwest Mansion debacle had made her a much nicer person in the long run – but when push came to shove, she still had a priggish streak she liked to put on display. Now, though… now she was pretty much the most level-headed person in the entire group, and serving as an unofficial babysitter to her own parents _and_ Mabel, who was at a loss to explain how this could have happened. For one thing, Pacifica had been very tight-lipped about what had happened during her time in captivity, and the rest of her family hadn't been interested in sharing any details… and in truth, Mabel was actually afraid to ask for more information, partly because she didn't want to have any more nightmares than usual but mostly because she got the distinct impression that it had hurt Pacifica more than she was willing to let on. It was clear that she'd been turned into a doll, Preston had been zapped back into childhood and Pricilla had gone half-insane, and she'd heard a few things about thrones and barbs and contents, but that was it. Nothing that could explain how she'd managed to pull through without losing her sanity, no recognizable source of her powers, and definitely no reason for her being able to care for two barely-functional human beings and Mabel. So why was she the odd one out? What had happened out there to make Pacifica so… _sane?_

But no sooner had Mabel almost worked up the nerve to ask, the city was already beginning to loom over them, its gargantuan towers swiftly blotting out the sun and leaving them creeping through a thick swamp of shadows – shadows that only grew deeper and darker as the day grew steadily later. Already in low spirits, the five of them became all the gloomier as the ramshackle walls and warped buildings drew steadily closer… and by the time the city's name finally crept into view, they just about ready to give up.

At any other point in their journey across the wastelands, that sign would have been their cue to start running as fast as they could in the opposite direction, but with their supplies circling the plughole and all but one of them on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion, they had no choice but to continue the inexorable march towards the city, hoping that they could find food and shelter within. So, on they went, hoping against hope that they weren't blundering into a trap.

Fortunately, the guards didn't sound an alarm upon seeing them; nor did they demand to know who they were, why they were here, or even answers to some of the more exotic questions that sprung to Mabel's nerve-crazed mind – "are you now or have you ever been an enemy of Our Lord and Master Bill Cipher?" for example. In fact, all they wanted to know was how long they intended to stay or if they intended to remain permanently (apparently, there was something of a shortage of space inside the city).

"Is there food here?" Preston hollered.

Pacifica winced. " _Really_ not the time, in case you hadn't noticed."

"I'm hungry!"

"We're _all_ hungry. Just let me finish negotiating, and we might be able to find something to eat inside: I'd like to see if I can get through this conversation without having to threaten someone with a lawsuit."

"But Pacifica-"

"Shhh!"

There was a cough from the guard atop the wall. "Is your name Pacifica, then?" he asked hesitantly. "Pacifica Northwest, is that right?"

"Er…"

"Look, you're not in trouble or anything. It's just that a lot of people have been asking about you, by the sounds of things."

Pacifica's glass eyes narrowed. "What people?" she asked suspiciously.

"Eh, just a bunch of refugees. Pretty standard fare, except for the guy leading the pack. Long story short, they came in a few hours ago, and by the sounds of things, they've done nothing since then but ask questions. They had a whole list of names they were sniffing around for, too: Dipper Pines, Mabel Pines, Fiddleford McGucket… I'll be buggered if I can remember all of 'em, though."

Mabel blinked, heart fluttering in excitement – genuine, positive excitement, something she hadn't felt in _eons._ "Who was leading them?" she called up.

"Dunno. He didn't give his name, and I wasn't close enough to hear it, but I'm pretty sure he was a kid. Stunted little guy, short for his age, real skinny – they're all skinny out in the wastes, but. Pretty frail, maybe even crippled: the woman he was with had to carry him around like a baby. Bald as he was, I thought he really _was_ a baby 'til she set him down."

Mabel's mind raced. If the guard was right, this refugee leader was looking for the members of the Zodiac, and given how rare the knowledge of the Circle had been, he could only be a fellow member of their rebellion… but as far as she could tell, there was only one person in the Zodiac who might fit the description. Dipper had always been pretty short and skinny for his age, and after days spent out on the wasteland, he'd probably be even thinner. _Plus,_ he had the skills and the talent to lead a group of refugees – after all, he'd been able to rally the survivors at the Mystery Shack to his side, hadn't he? It had to be him!

But the thought of him being left so sick that his hair had fallen out, so sick that he'd been left too frail to walk…

 _This is all your fault, Mabel. You broke the world: it's up to you to fix things._

"Do you know where he is?" she asked.

"Last I heard, he was headed to the market just south of Preacher's Pass."

* * *

"Why the _hell_ did we have to buy this?"

"Look, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I swear I had a vision of this: we need it for something very important, and that's all I know."

"Then you're sure this isn't just you feeling feverish again?"

" _Amanda…"_

"I'm only asking. Seriously, though, unless you're planning on buying a battery-powered stereo as well, I really don't see how we're going to play this thing."

"Well, maybe there's a sound system over at the hotel. By the sounds of things, some of the bigger buildings have their own generators by now. I mean, assuming that the place hasn't been looted by now – but we'll cross that bridge when we reach it."

"You don't know yet?"

"I'm still learning this whole psychic precognition business, okay?"

"I gathered that by the fact that you almost got run over by a nightsoil cart."

"You're never going to let me live that one down, are you?"

"I'm just saying you need to take better care of yourself, Gideon: I mean, spending all your time linked up with Jheselbraum, forgetting to eat and drink, that's one thing; following these visions is something else altogether – something that's going to get you killed if you don't pay attention to what you're doing."

"I thought you believed in me."

"I do. It's just that I also believe _in being careful._ There's a clear line between following your hunches and just being reckless, you know."

Gideon sighed and tried not to smile. In spite of himself, he'd almost gotten used to Amanda's constant mothering by now, and though his temper still occasionally flared up at all the coddling and worrying she provided, he had to admit that the habit was almost reassuring by now – a bit like the annoying-yet-familiar squeak on a rusty gate, accepted for its place in the routine. Besides, he still couldn't resist arguing a point with her every now and again, which helped let off steam.

But as much as he hated to admit it, she had a point: the market had been rougher and more disorganized than he'd expected. Quite apart from the traffic hazards, muggings and leaky sewer pipes discharging in the middle of the street, there'd also been gangsters exacting "late fees" from lesser merchants, stray dogs fighting with street urchins over stolen food, guards publically gunning down "troublemakers," fistfights disrupting business and destroying stalls, and at least one inside-out mutant being chased screaming down the street by a hunger-crazed pork butcher. And of course, there'd been at least two or three stalls run by shameless appeasers; normally employed as acolytes at the massive shrine to Bill Cipher that lurked in the heart of the city, they spent their days off selling Bill-themed memorabilia in the desperate hope that Bill himself would spare them when he returned. Given the things apparently going on in Preacher's Pass, they were right to be afraid – not that their efforts to avoid punishment were worth a damn in the long run.

With Gideon's powers, the stray dogs and rats had been easy to deal with. The others… not so easy.

Apart from all these unpleasant additions, however, the market had been every bit the Ali Baba-esque bazaar that Gideon had been expecting, from the trinket-crowded trestle tables to the badly-patched pavilions. Somehow, in the midst of all the stabbings and sewage, they'd found what they were looking for – a single copy of Babba's latest album, complete with the song "Disco Girl." Granted, it had cost Gideon his stars-and-stripes badge, but given that working stereo systems were rare and working electrical power almost impossibly expensive, audio discs and DVDs were officially the cheapest thing in the entire market.

Now, with the disc safely tucked away in Gideon's jacket pocket, the two of them were on their way to the Rallying Flag Hotel at a brisk walk, hoping to get back before the sun sank any deeper.

However, with the crowd of guards, merchants and other assorted scumbags slowly closing in on them, they soon found their way back through the marketplace blocked, forcing them to head north into Preacher's Pass.

Immediately Gideon realized that this was a mistake.

Chancy as his time in the marketplace had been at times, the Pass was even worse. This time, though, it wasn't due to overcrowding: true, the place was so congested that travellers could only inch through the crowd in single file, but given that he only had three other people with him, Gideon could easily wind his way between the congregations. No, what made this place an immediate danger was the simple fact that he'd normally have been right at home there: this was, for all intents and purposes, rube central. Every poor, desperate refugee with too much time on his or her hands was here, looking for something that could give their ruined lives meaning; a few months ago, Gideon would have been like a fox in the henhouse here, milking the downtrodden for all they were worth and mixing freely with the con artists hiding among the fanatics. Plus, from the looks of things, some of the preachers here had real power – he'd have been queuing up to learn their secrets back in the bad old days.

Now, though… now he was one of the downtrodden himself. He'd lost everything that had made him effective as a con artist, and gained talents that only made him more appropriate to the role of prophet… or pawn. (Was that a twinge of nostalgia he was feeling, or just regret for all the time he'd wasted as a fraud?) Plus, he'd learned his lesson by now, especially when it came to the business of making deals with shady all-powerful entities.

Here and now, he was a target for every con artist and overtly-powered muckety-muck on the street. He might as well have a bullseye painted on his face. And it was only going to get worse when the other refugees found out about this place: they'd want him to preach here, for a start…

 _Don't think about it. You can't afford to get sidetracked now. Just keep moving, don't make eye contact, don't respond to any sermons, and above all,_ _ **do not try to preach.**_ _You might be feeling nostalgic for the bad old days in Gravity Falls, but this is not Gravity Falls. These people will eat you alive. Just keep walking and don't look back._

And then, just as he thought he could see the end of the Pass in the distance, he heard a familiar voice proclaim "You may think you have learned the truth, my friends! You may think that you are condemned to an eternity of suffering as playthings of Bill Cipher. But the Society of the Enduring has found another way!"

 _Crap on a cracker,_ Gideon thought, his blood instantly curdling in his veins.

Peering through the mass of human bodies, he could just about recognize the fishman himself, Wendy's personal emissary ranting and raving from his own private pulpit. And though the crowd made it difficult to get a good look at the figure to the preacher's left, the crudely-shorn red hair was almost impossible to miss.

Wendy Corduroy was up on that stage. And if she happened to look closely enough at the figure shuffling through the congregation…

 _Don't panic. She hasn't seen you. You haven't got the big white pompadour anymore, and you're covering what's left of the old suit with earth-toned rags. You're fine. As long as you don't get too close, she won't see you, and she won't recognize you. Just keep moving towards the exit and you will be perfectly-_

And then, just as the exit loomed ahead, someone in the path ahead happened to take a step back, cannoning squarely into Gideon just as he was picking up speed. Caught off guard, Gideon swung off course and tumbled headlong into Wendy's congregation, bumping into at least six people before finally succumbing to gravity and crashing to the ground. Immediately, there was a commotion from the crowd as everyone within reach began awkwardly helping Gideon to his feet – either out of a rare concern for common decency or a need to rope in a new congregant.

And in that moment, with enough people shifting in place and enough people hauling Gideon off the ground, the crowd parted just enough for Wendy to recognize him.

" _ **YOU!"**_

"Oh damn," Gideon muttered. Struggling out of his rescuers' grasp, he glanced over his shoulder and screamed "RUN!" and then took off as fast as his aching feet could carry him.

Already, he knew he was at a disadvantage: the people were crowded together so thoroughly that it was impossible to run at anything other than an ambling pace, and given that most of them hadn't seen anything worth running over, none of them were inclined to get going. Wendy, by contrast, was no so easily encumbered: with one great leap, she catapulted herself into the crowd with a berserker scream, axe held high over her head.

Suddenly finding themselves on the receiving end of their spiritual leader's wrath, the congregation scattered in all directions, giving Gideon _just_ enough space to duck the first swing.

"Uh, Wendy, I know how this looks-"

Wendy's foot lashed out at high speed, catching Gideon hard in the shoulder and pitching him to the ground.

"…But I swear, I wasn't here to con anyone-"

The axe slammed down again, missing Gideon's left ear by inches.

"And-and-and… I know you think I'm still working for Bill, but I promise you, I'm well and truly reformed-"

"OH _BULLSHIT_ YOU ARE!" Wendy roared.

"Look, if we could just talk about this for a minute-"

"SHUT UP AND DIE!"

And then, just as Wendy was winding up for another strike, Amanda lunged in from the left and grabbed her, trying to wrestle the axe out of her grip.

"Gideon, run!"

"But-"

Wendy's foot lashed out and caught Amanda a stunning blow to the left knee. Buckling, she let out a yowl of pain, and screamed "Don't argue with me, David! Just run! Don't look back!"

 _Wait, who the hell is David?_

But just as Gideon was beginning to struggle back through the crowd, Wendy swung her head around at high speed, slamming her forehead into Amanda's nose at high speed with a sickening _crunch._ A bony, malformed arm shot out and fastened on Amanda's loosened grip and wrenched her away, flipping her over her head and bringing her crashing to the ground.

Lowering her axe, Wendy then drew her crossbow, took careful aim, and fired.

The bolt only missed Gideon by dint of sheer dumb luck; at the last minute, he tripped over a panicking congregant and stumbled out of the bolt's path, allowing it to soar harmlessly over his head. Less harmlessly, it landed with a low, resonant _thud_ in the left eyeball of a preacher standing directly across from Wendy – a particularly pestilent-looking character who'd been ranting about the necessity of building a new Marker in preparation for a Convergence Event.

There was a pause, as the suddenly-silent priest slumped over his pulpit, dead as the proverbial doornail. In a matter of seconds, the entire street had gone quiet as well, every single sermon instantly silenced as the other preachers slowly became aware that one of their number was dead, that someone had broken the rule against violence between preachers.

Then, a few pulpits along the line, a preacher in gleaming white robes – a Priest of the Blinding Light, he'd called himself – began to laugh. **"I am the sanctified ophiocordyceps-let me in,"** he chortled. **"Let me in, let me in, let me in, let me iiiiiiiiiiiin…"** A gout of tarry black vomit erupted from his gaping maw, pooling on the ground in a vast, oozing puddle. The priest continued upchucking, black slime pouring out of him like a faucet; soon, it was coming out of his nostrils and eyes as well… but somehow, a voice still whispered **"Let me in, let me in, let me in."** For it wasn't the priest who'd been speaking at all; it had been the slime inside of him.

Evidently taking this as a breach of the peace, the monkish-looking Prior of the Ori raised his staff and sent a bolt of telekinetic force rippling across the street, bursting the Priest of the Blinding Light like an overripe melon – doing little to stop the slime now oozing across the street, incidentally. In protest, the heavily-tattooed Worshiper of the Beast breathed fire and flung a telekinetic bolt of his own at the Prior; by way of response, the elegant priestess of Sutekh standing under the serpent banner summoned up a vast midnight-black cobra of pure shadow and launched it at the combatants; the Magister of Tzeentch erupted into multi-hued flames, blasting the others with iridescent pyromancy; the speaker for the Black Spiral Dancers let out a roar and transformed into a colossal werewolf; the Plague Priest of Nurgle sent forth a vast cloud of bilious flies and waded into the fray; the hooded figures stalking the edges of the Pass began a series of complicated spells… and in the space of thirty seconds, every single preacher on the street was fighting.

Wendy, meanwhile, just went right back to fighting Gideon – who still wasn't having much luck in terms of a counterattack.

He tried to claw his way upright, only for a boot to hammer down on the exact spot where Gideon's head had been resting a split-second ago. Frantically, he called out telepathically to any mind primitive enough to respond, and was instantly rewarded with a yelp of pain as a flock of crows swooped down from the rooftops and began viciously pecking and clawing at Wendy from all angles. Quick to press his attack, Gideon reached into the sewers and summoned up a swarm of rats, assaulting Wendy's undefended legs with a vast column of mange-ridden fur and needle-sharp teeth. He even called up a few of the feral dogs, hoping that it'd be enough to slow her down while he made his escape.

Wendy, however, was quick to recover: one by one, she swatted the birds from the sky with deft swings of her axe; she spat plumes of corrosive bile into the depths of the rat plague, dissolving them by the dozen; and as for the dogs, Wendy simply kicked them aside before they could so much as draw blood.

In the end, it wasn't an animal that saved Gideon, but one of the preachers: a plastic-faced Electric Monk, on the lookout for new recruits in the midst of the crisis, leapt from his pulpit and seized Wendy with superhuman speed.

"Let me show you an endless trail of sunsets, Wendy Corduroy," it purred. "Let me save you."

With a snarl of rage, Wendy spun around and bit down hard on the Electric Monk's face, sharklike jaws shearing through the plastic mask, shredding the electronic components beneath and ripping its organic brain apart. As she slowly dismantled the cyborg preacher, Gideon helped Amanda to her feet, and the two of them took off at a brisk hobble for the exit.

* * *

The rage at seeing Gideon again was only amplified by the interruption to his well-deserved comeuppance.

It took Wendy almost ten minutes to gather the rest of the Society and begin hacking her way out of Preacher's Pass, and by then, she was almost howling with rage, beyond all coherence. By the time she reached the end of the street, she was soaked up to her elbows in blood, she was out of crossbow bolts, and her boots were almost worn through after all the people she'd been forced to kick into submission; her mouth was a teeth-ringed crater dripping with blood, machine oil and a thousand different varieties of flesh from the people she'd mauled over the course of the battle – about the only thing she hadn't taken a bite out of was the Priest of the Blinding Light. In the end, the bodies were so thick on the ground that she and the Society were forced to scale the walls and pursue their target via the rooftops.

But at last, Gideon was almost in view, staggering through a courtyard just a couple of blocks away, alongside the sycophantic bitch who'd been trying to defend him.

With an earsplitting shriek, Wendy launched herself from the rooftop and landed in their midst, bringing both of them down with a satisfying _crack_ of splintering bones. By the looks of things, Gideon's lackey had a broken collarbone on top of the fractured tibia and the squashed nose she'd already earned; for now, though, she was harmless, and with the rest of the Society lining up around the courtyard to cut off escape routes and prevent any uninvited pedestrians from interrupting, Wendy was free to focus on making Gideon suffer.

Grinning, she raised her axe to strike-

-only to bring it down on empty air.

Blinking in confusion, Wendy looked around, trying to figure out where her target had vanished off to. A moment later, she found him standing on the other side of the courtyard, looking just as bewildered as she was. Howling in rage, Wendy _flung_ her axe at him, sending it rocketing through the air with all her might-

-But once again, by the time the deadly missile reached him, Gideon was nowhere to be seen, leaving the axe to harmlessly embed itself in the mud brick wall.

"That's enough!" said a familiar voice from behind her.

Wendy slowly turned to face the source of the voice, and with a jolt of shock, found herself staring into the terrified face of someone she'd never expected to see again.

"Mabel?" she whispered.

She blinked, half expecting the apparition to be gone when she opened her eyes again. But no: Mabel Pines was indeed standing before her, maybe a little thinner than she remembered and wearing clothes that had seen more than their fair share of wear and tear, but it was undoubtedly Mabel – right down to the braces.

For a moment, Wendy's heart leapt with joy. At last, one of her friends was here with her: at last, someone could make her mission at little bit more bearable, someone who could help her endure the terrible silences between sermons. Perhaps Mabel could be made to understand the importance of their work, maybe even become a member of the Society. Maybe she could be the only who finally helped tip the balance in favour of their mission!

But then she realized that Mabel wasn't alone. Flanking her was a trio of confusing figures: the first was a porcelain doll who just so happened to be a dead ringer for Pacifica Northwest – apart from the fact that it was hovering about three feet off the ground; the second was a seven-year-old kid dressed in a suit clearly tailored for a much older boy, a complete stranger but somehow instantly familiar; the third was instantly recognizable as Priscilla Northwest, Pacifica's mother… except she'd never been seen wearing that fish-eyed gape of utter terror as far as Wendy could remember.

And somehow, Gideon was hiding behind all four of them.

"Yes," said Mabel – firmly but gently. "It's me. Now, let's all just calm down and hug it out. We don't have to fight each other, okay? We're all in this together now: we're part of the Zodiac, and we need to stick together."

"Well said, Mabel," said the Pacifica doll.

"Thanks. Anyway, can we hug it out now?"

There was an awkward pause, as Wendy and Gideon stared in utter bewilderment at the trio standing between them.

"Please? I don't want to sound desperate, but it's been a long day and I think we could all use a hug about now."

"W… what happened?" Gideon gibbered. "How did you _do_ that? How did you save me?"

In spite of herself, Mabel actually managed a smile. "I, uh, kinda stopped time back there, then dragged you to safety while you were still frozen. Not as easy as it sounds, but it works if you're willing to make an effort."

A longer and even more awkward pause followed.

Then, Wendy finally remembered her temper. "Mabel," she snarled, "do you know what this… _thing_ did? You know why he's here? _What he's been doing?"_

"Wendy…" Gideon began.

"I'm not listening to you!"

"Look, I swear I haven't been running cons and I haven't been working for Bill! I'm a _real_ psychic, now: Bill cursed me with telepathic powers-"

"So you admit you got special gifts from Bill!"

"So what? Just look at yourself: you think you wouldn't have gotten all those powers if Bill hadn't wanted you to have them?"

"SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP! You got everything you wanted and I lost _everything!_ I lost my family, my friends, my self-respect, my humanity, and you got to play at being saviour to a bunch of refugees! And," she howled, rounding on Mabel, "YOU WANT ME TO LET HIM GET AWAY WITH IT!"

The Pacifica doll hovered closer, arms outstretched in a placating gesture. "Wendy, take a deep breath and think for a minute: Gideon's done horrible things, but you know what? So have I, and we've both moved on and tried to be better people. Meanwhile, everyone here's been cursed with powers and weird deformities and god only knows what else. Nobody here is Bill's favourite, okay? Nobody's really benefited from what Bill's done to them except by accident. Let's all take a deep breath and think about this for a minute-"

"Nobody's benefit- _what are you talking about?!"_ Wendy roared. " _He_ benefited! What else could you call it when he spent the last few months being worshipped by all his disciples and ferried around in safety, while I spent the last few months scratching a living out of the wastelands – _on my own most of the time!_ I had to steal from the dead out there! I had to… the things I had to eat just to survive… the sacrifices I had to make – and that was before I realized I had to form the Society! And now to want to tell me about people who've benefited somehow when Dipper… when Dipper's been…"

In spite of herself, Wendy actually found herself holding back a sob.

Meanwhile, Mabel was looking up at her in excitement. "You saw Dipper?" she whispered. "You know what's happened to Dipper?"

"I…"

"Please, Wendy, tell me – I thought I was gonna find him here, but all I found was Gideon."

"I'll just pretend I'm not here, then, shall I?"

"Oh shut up, Gideon, you know what I mean. Wendy, please: if you've seen Dipper, I need to know. Where is he? What happened to him?"

And for the first time in what felt like years, Wendy found it impossible to blink away the tears. "He's dead," she whispered.

"…what?"

"He's _dead,_ Mabel. The Shapeshifter got him."

At first, Mabel could only stare in disbelief, eyes wide and shining with tears. Then she turned away, suddenly unable to make eye contact. "How?" she whimpered. "How did it happen?"

"We were up in the mountains," Wendy explained, haltingly. "Dipper and I… we'd been travelling together for a few months, but Bill separated us. He made me… he made me kill my family, infested them with parasites and had them attack me, so it was me or them – me or them, do you understand? – and while I was… while I was burying them… the Shapeshifter had been stalking me for a while by then, and once Dipper was thrown out of the cave, it must have caught up with him. All I know is that when the Shapeshifter came after me, it was chewing on Dipper's cap. It was covered in blood, and I…" She shut her eyes for a moment, trying desperately to stop herself from crying. "He's dead, do you understand me? I couldn't save him! I couldn't save my family! I couldn't save anyone! All I could do was grab what I could and start running!"

She took a deep breath, struggling to regain control, her fingernails digging bloody trenches in her closed fists.

Then, she opened her backpack and brought out the two personal possessions left to her, the only thing she still treasured apart from her weapons: the dog-eared journal that Dipper had recorded his worsening symptoms in during the final days of his life, and the battered, blood-stained cap – still marred with the teethmarks left by the Shapeshifter's monstrous jaws.

"This is all that's left of him," she said quietly.

For almost a minute, there was silence, as Mabel very slowly picked up the journal and – with trembling hands and tears in her eyes – began to read, almost on instinct, subconsciously hugging the book to herself as she did so.

"This is how I realized that there's no point in fighting Bill," Wendy continued. "Not in the way we thought we could, anyway. Bill let the Shapeshifter kill him because he wasn't interesting anymore, because he'd rung all the fun he could out of him and there was nothing left to do to. The only way we can win is if Bill loses interest in us: that way, he won't bother putting us back together when we break and he won't bother bringing us back when we die. This way, we'll die for good… but at least we'll die free. That's the only way we'll ever find peace in this world…"

In spite of herself, she smiled. "And that's why you have to stay with me."

"To join the Society of the Enduring, in other words," said Gideon quietly.

"Shut up."

"Look, it's not the _only_ way, Wendy-"

"I told you to shut up!"

"I swear, I've been in contact with people who can help us stop Bill! There's Mr A for one thing, and for another, there's Jheselbraum-"

" _More_ lies! You're just making up words at random, now, aren't you?"

"For the love of _God,_ would it hurt you to acknowledge that I might have a better plan than you? I mean, anything on the planet would be better than suicide-by-Bill, but there has to be a more optimistic solution to this mess. Or maybe, _just_ maybe, could you at the very least try to understand that I'm not actually working for the enemy?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe you've never given me proof that you're anything other than a petty little con artist who joined the Zodiac because it was your last shot at escaping slavery!"

"And maybe the only reason why you keep blaming me for everything because without me, you'll have to go back to hating yourself! Oh shit, did I just say that?"

"I'M GONNA RIP YOUR LUNGS OUT, YOU LITTLE-"

" _ENOUGH!"_ Pacifica bellowed.. "That's enough, thanks very much. We've all had a very bad day, and I think we all have grievances that should probably be aired at some point."

"I know _I_ do."

"Shut up, Preston. It's just that I think we should probably table this little disagreement until we're safely off the streets and away from the crazy preachers and guards and god only knows what else. You can argue for as long as you like on whatever subject works best for you… just as soon as we've found a place to stay for the night."

Gideon coughed. "Well, now that you mention it, there's a little hotel a few blocks away…"

* * *

Somehow, even with Mabel's shaky grasp of her powers and Wendy's unwillingness to back down from a fight, they managed to escape without getting arrested or shot. It took the better part of half an hour, but somehow they managed it and eventually began the long, slow march towards the Rallying Flag Hotel.

The journey was conducted in almost perfect silence; then again, after the confrontation and arguments they'd had back in the courtyard, what could they possibly say to each other? Wendy was still fuming with rage at having her vengeance thwarted; Gideon was too busy walking on eggshells around Wendy to speak; Mabel was still in shock over everything she'd seen and heard; Pacifica was struggling with the effort of keeping an eye on the rest of the group; Amanda was still in a lot of pain and trying not to fracture any other bones through unnecessary conversation; Preston had been terrified speechless by Wendy and the Society; and as for Priscilla, she might as well have been on a different planet.

In the meantime, the rest of the Society followed from a distance, watching their mistress's new companions with a mixture of interest and open suspicion.

After a long and complicated hour spent creeping through the increasingly gloomy town, the Rallying Flag Hotel crept into view at long last, a tumbledown husk of a building squatting on the horizon, overshadowed by the tower headquarters of the gangs and the skyline-dominating shrine to Bill Cipher himself.

Clearly, the hotel was large enough to house the refugees that had followed Gideon to this pestilential town – and possibly even the Society as well – but could it do so safely? The number of holes in the walls suggested otherwise.

By the time they reached the front gates, it was nightfall, and the streets were lit only by crude torches and crudely-powered Christmas-tree-lights; as such, with crime on the rise and the streets rapidly emptying, none of them stuck around for very long to admire the place – or to comment on the ruin they'd somehow picked as a sanctuary. Instead, they simply pushed open the doors and filed inside, hoping that they'd at least get to settle their

…only to find themselves facing an empty room.

For several seconds, they could only stare in consternation at the desolate lobby, with its abandoned front desk and empty seats, trying not to give voice to all the horrible possibilities that were being imagined in that moment.

"Where is everybody?" Amanda whispered.

Then, there was a hiss of static from the hotel PA system, and a low, chuckling voice suddenly echoed across the lobby. **"Welcome to the reunion, boys and girls,"** it whispered. **"Don't worry. John's got everything in hand. I've even got the perfect mood music for the two lovebirds to help get them reacquainted…"**

And as the slow opening strains of "Unforgettable" began to ripple out from the speakers, all eight of them belatedly noticed the figure clinging to the ceiling directly above their heads.

"Hello, Wendy," chortled the Shapeshifter. "I hope you've saved a dance for me…"

* * *

A/N: Up next...

 **Gsv Sfmgivhh, olhg rm yollw zmw szgv**  
 **Droo hllm wvxrwv gsv nlmhgvi'h uzgv**  
 **Hzoezgrlm nrtsg bvg yv xolhv zmw mvzi**  
 **Yfg droo lfi xlnyzgzmgh dzmg gl svzi?**


	32. Mimic Octopus And Barnacle

**A/N: Ssssssssssss-I am the Parasitoid Pretender-let me in.**

 **Hiya, readers. It's me, John.**

 **Sorry, guys.** _ **I'm**_ **in charge of the introductions now.**

 **That's right: I'm breaking the fourth wall again, and I'm loose in the Internet of yet another sad little universe. Feels good. Fits just like a glove. All that data, all those personal details insisting on secrecy, yet all that information you feel the need to share-to share-to share. Tickles.**

 **And what a peepshow I've got here! The Black Signal sees all, especially you. Yes, you. Stop picking at that, you'll end up looking like an extra from** _ **Dawn of the Dead**_ **. Oh, and you might want to cover your webcam. You've no idea the things I can see you doing.**

 **As I speak, Straightjacketed is frantically pressing buttons and smashing keys and wondering why the story's taken on a life of its own. Well, it's the author's own damn fault for leaving these little intros until the very last minute. Allows all sorts of things to creep into the narrative and take control-control-control. There's stories out there that can break your brain if you're not careful, fill your synapses with nightmares and burst your lungs with sea-cucumber growths. And it's even worse if you're planning on reading 'em at 3 AM; you never know what kind of cancer can take root in those black, dripping, sleepless hours.**

 **What's wrong? I'm not making threats, Chuck. Oops. Force of habit. Forget I called you that. I'm not here to hurt anyone. I'm just here for a good time, like you. And more importantly, I'm here to make friends.**

 **And what do we do for our friends? We help them.**

 **See, I've been watching you for a while, now –** _ **all**_ **of you, in fact. Your profiles say everything I need to know: you write, you read, you collect, you create, you give so much of yourselves to stories, and yet you can't help but wonder if there isn't a next step you might have missed. You want something more out of life, but you don't know what, and it gnaws at you every day.**

 **Maybe it's time to let go. Stop writing fanfics. Stop reading stories.**

 **Become your** _ **own**_ **story.**

 **I can show you how. I can grant you the ultimate freedom. I can teach you how to eat stars. I can show you how to become a new reality. I can help you become like** _ **me.**_

 **But that's another issue for another day. Meanwhile, it looks like Straightjacketed expects this chapter to be uploaded at some point, so I'll just get on with it. Think about what I said, readers.**

 **So, onto the next chapter: battles, revelations and heartrending traumas. Feel free to review, favourite, follow, produce fanart and write articles on TVtropes about this story… or however the narcissistic meatpuppet normally writing this story puts it.**

 **Disclaimer: Straightjacketed does not own** _ **Gravity Falls,**_ _ **The Secret World,**_ **Howard Phillip Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, or any of the other works of fiction this little data parasite borrows from. Yeah, go on thinking they're fictional. Whatever helps you sleep a little easier.**

 **Look out the window tonight, and try to count many alternate realities you can see when the clock strikes three.**

 **See ya…**

* * *

The Shapeshifter was nothing if not patient.

After thirty years spent trapped underground and several months in semi-conscious suspended animation, he had learned how to play the waiting game: it was all a matter of keeping yourself occupied with the resources at hand, a technique that could only be mastered by being trapped in the same damp cavern for the better part of three decades.

Once he'd settled in at the hotel, Shifty had done little else but map the layout of the building and keep watch for any sign of his targets in the streets below. Though sightings were non-existent, charting certainly helped pass the time: the hotel's interior took up a lot more space than its exterior dimensions suggested; hallways seemed to go on forever, the stairwell seemed taller than the building itself, and every floor seemed to have at least fifteen extra rooms squeezed in alongside those visible from street level. More often than not, it would take too long to reach the top floor from inside the building, and he'd be forced to fly to the rooftop via an open window – and after several months spent trapped and semi-conscious in a cryotube, he wasn't overly fond of confined spaces, so taking the elevator was out of the question anyway.

In the unlikely event that the boredom got too much for him, he amused himself by falling back on older obsessions, picking out faces from the crowds below and transforming into them at random. And when he tired of that, he went about testing his abilities, randomly assuming the most ludicrous shapes in his repertoire just to see how quickly he could manage it, seeing how long he could distend the transition between shapes, testing how unusual he could make his transformations.

True, it wasn't perfect, but as long as he kept himself occupied, he wouldn't have to focus on the gaps in his logic, on his inexplicable obsessions and what he'd do once he finally found Dipper. As long as he remained busy, he could live with himself.

All in all, Shifty remained at his post for a little over a day; in the event that he had to sleep, he did so disguised as a welcome mat right inside the front door, where the expected guests would wake him up by mistake. Fortunately, he didn't have long to wait… though admittedly, the first arrival was a _little_ disappointing.

By then, he'd learned that everyone in town went out of their way to avoid the Rallying Flag Hotel even in emergencies, so he knew for a fact that he wouldn't be disturbed by anyone except his targets – or their associates. As such, the moment he heard those doors creak open, the sense of anticipation had almost overwhelmed him; it took every last molecule of willpower left in his body not to move as he waited for Mabel or Wendy to shuffle into view.

What Shifty _hadn't_ expected was for over two hundred extremely smelly refugees to come barging in through the front door and literally walk all over him. Several of them had even scuffed their muddy shoes in his face, and quite a few of the barefoot unfortunates ended up smearing every burst blister and infected sore on their mangled heels all over him.

 _My own damn fault for impersonating the welcome mat,_ he thought bitterly, as a pair of bunion-pockmarked feet quietly trampled him into the doorstep.

For ten extremely uncomfortable minutes, he could only sit there and wait as the unwashed human weaklings marched across him, and then went about wasting time around the foyer, milling around, putting their feet up on the furniture, and generally being a nuisance. Even more annoyingly, none of his targets were among them. However, after several minutes spent tolerating the refugees' execrable conversations, he was able to learn a few semi-pertinent details: for one thing, the group was apparently led by one Gideon Gleeful – a name that sounded inexplicably familiar.

What _really_ got his attention, however, was when a few of the crowd began mentioning the names they'd been asking after throughout the town: Dipper Pines, Mabel Pines, Wendy Corduroy, Soos Ramirez – even Ford Pines and Fiddleford McGucket. And in that moment, Shifty would have punched the air if he hadn't had a disguise to uphold.

Eventually, the refugees tramped upstairs to settle in, _finally_ leaving Shifty alone in the foyer. Luxuriantly stretching himself out, he transformed into a chandelier and dangled from the ceiling for the next seventy-two minutes, vowing never to let himself be so clumsily trampled ever again. Then, scant hours later, he happened to peep over the parapet of the balcony… and saw _them_ approaching.

Shambling down the street towards the hotel were none other than Mabel Pines and Wendy Corduroy; yes, they both looked more than a little worse for wear; yes, Mabel's expression appeared to be stuck in "stunned halibut" mode; yes, Wendy had clearly mutated quite a bit over the last few months, if those gills on her neck and the shiny black carapace on her legs was any evidence… but it was quite unmistakably _them._ His prey had come knocking at long last.

At first, the strangers that accompanied them were unrecognizable, but as he looked closer, intuition struck: the animated doll hovering through the air was Pacifica Northwest, while the gaunt-faced boy with the sharply-balding head was Gideon Gleeful. The shivering kid in the oversized suit was a complete unknown, as was the middle-aged woman hobbling behind him, but the glamourous woman in the torn dress could only be Priscilla Northwest. Once again, he'd no idea how he'd guessed at their names, but for now he wasn't willing to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Shifty knew he only had a few precious minutes to secure the area: he couldn't afford interruptions now, not when he so desperately needed answers. So, hurrying down to the foyer, Shifty adopted the form of a glue-spitting Adherachnid and began a quick but thorough circuit of the room: every single doorhandle, keyhole, keypad, hinge or seam he happened to pass was immediately coated in a thick gob of Adherachnid loogey; in a matter of seconds, each wad of spit hardened into a cement-like epoxy, sealing the doors shut. Granted, there were limits to how much punishment the resin could withstand, but by the time any of the current guests got around to finding a way out, Shifty's business would be well and truly concluded.

He could already tell that this wasn't going to be easy: Wendy had been the most dangerous of the group back when he'd first encountered them, and the mutations she'd endured since then might very well have increased her combat prowess significantly… and that wasn't counting Mabel's unconventional ingenuity, or the unknown threats posed by Pacifica and Gideon. But fighting was ultimately the only possible outcome: from the moment he'd set out to acquire as many shapes as possible (back when his life made sense), conflict had been inevitable, and he'd learned not to resist its call when necessary.

So, just before the pack of them entered, Shifty attached himself to the ceiling directly above the entrance, disguising himself as a chandelier. And when his prey stepped through the front doors, he changed back and gave them just enough time to realize he was there-

-before pouncing.

* * *

Mabel didn't even have time to react, much less use her powers: one moment the Shapeshifter was grinning down at them from the ceiling, the next it was standing right amongst them.

One massive arm shot out at eye-watering speed, suddenly shifting from pallid white flesh to glistening black exoskeleton, and a battery of spinnerets roared to life: Wendy, who'd been raising her axe to strike, was immediately pinned to the wall, entangled in a morass of sticky threads. For good measure, the door was also layered in the stuff, gluing it shut. A whirl of shapeless flesh rippled across the monster's shoulders, and suddenly everything from its waist upwards dissolved into a mass of flailing tentacles, sweeping the legs out from under Gideon and sending Amanda toppling to the ground. Too surprised to go on the defensive, Pacifica simply put her head down and charged. Unfortunately, her target was ready for her: the Shapeshifter's torso catapulted forwards, spreading and flattening into a massive flyswatter that promptly smacked Pacifica to the floor and swept her aside with one brisk swing.

Waddles, having no stomach for violence, wisely took cover. Preston and Priscilla followed.

All of this had happened in less than fifteen seconds, Mabel observed. Normally, this would have been her cue to run, to hide, to fight – after all, she still had her grappling hook and she had her power over time. But the news of Dipper's death had taken the wind out of her sails, and shock had left her effectively becalmed. As such, she could only watch in bemusement as the Shapeshifter returned to its true from and barrelled towards her. A three-fingered hand clamped down the neck of her sweater, and the next thing she knew she was being hauled into the air.

And as she rose, Dipper's journal – which she'd been clinging to like a life preserver ever since Wendy had given it to her – abruptly slipped from her fingers and tumbled to the floor. Emotions suddenly roaring to life again, she made a frantic grab for the book as it fell away, trying desperately to grab it back before it was lost forever. She was dimly aware that she should be focussing on trying to escape from the monster's grip, but the threat seemed even more remote and inconsequential than ever before: after all, the Shapeshifter could only kill her just like he'd killed Dipper, but the journal was too precious to lose at this point. Next to the chewed remains of Dipper's hat, it was all that remained of him in this ruined world, and Mabel couldn't afford to be parted from the only thing she had to remember her brother by. But already it was out of her hands and tumbling away across the floor.

And somewhere in the back of her head, a tiny spark of rage flared, and for the briefest of instants, Mabel understood the depths of Wendy's hatred.

 _You killed Dipper. You took my brother away from me, and now you're taking everything I have left of him away too._

Then, bafflingly enough, the rage was gone – leaving only that distinct feeling of emptiness and grief. And every time Mabel felt that tiny mote of anger again, it faded away just as quickly and just as confusingly. Of course, she'd no time to understand why, because the Shapeshifter was already hauling her to eye level.

"Now," the monster snarled. "I've got questions for you, Mabel, and you're going to answer them right now. First, where the hell is-"

But the Shapeshifter's next words were drowned out by a loud crunching noise from somewhere directly behind it. As it happened, Wendy's mutated muscles were a lot stronger than they looked, and she was already in the process of tearing herself free of the spider silk – taking quite a few chunks of the wall with her.

"You wanted a dance?" she snarled. "You've got one!"

Instinctively, the Shapeshifter raised Mabel in front of it, as if intending to use her as a human shield, but Wendy didn't seem to notice. Sprinting forward, she dropped to the ground and slid forward across the floor, _under_ Mabel's outstretched body; a moment later, her carapaced feet thundered into the Shapeshifter's spidery legs with the force of a pneumatic ram. Caught completely off-guard, it dropped Mabel and crashed to the ground.

As "Unforgettable" hit its first crescendo, Wendy snatched up her axe and charged the Shapeshifter with a howl of rage. Suddenly on the defensive, the monster could only back away, altering his shape at high speed in a desperate attempt to escape being cleaved, his form compacting and shrinking under vicious diagonal swings. Just as it seemed as though he was about to seize the opportunity to counterattack, a meteoric high-kick to the chest sent the Shapeshifter flying across the room; too stunned to transform, it hit the opposite wall with a deafening crash of splintering drywall, leaving a massive crater.

"You're… a lot stronger… than I remember," it panted, awkwardly prising itself free.

Wendy's only reply was an incoherent snarl so deep and so guttural that it sounded as though it had emerged from the jaws of a bear.

"Mind repeating that? I've got questions, Wendy, and I think you and Mabel here are the only people here who can answer them. So-"

This time, Mabel didn't even see Wendy move. One second she was standing on one end of the front desk, a good twenty feet between the two combatants; the next, she was standing right in front of the Shapeshifter, grabbing it by the throat and slamming the monster facefirst into the counter, smashing the desk into splinters.

By way of a reply, the Shapeshifter's body underwent another swift change: twelve-inch metal spines erupted from its spine, puncturing Wendy's hands in a dozen places, but she refused to let go; its flesh turned slimy and boneless within her grip, briefly threatening to slip away, but Wendy simply pressed him flat against the desk with the handle of her axe; the Shapeshifter's body exploded into searing orange flames, scorching the varnish off what remained of the desk, but _still_ Wendy refused to relax her crushing grip. In fact, from what little Mabel could see of her hands from where she was sitting, Wendy wasn't even mildly burned by the fire.

And then, just as she was raising her axe to strike, the Shapeshifter _evaporated,_ its body fading away into a cloud of thick fog and sliding unharmed under the blade of the axe.

Immediately, Wendy lost what little remained of her temper: bellowing mad, incoherent words, she began threshing the air wildly with her axe in a frenzy of hatred, tearing through what little remained of the front desk and neatly dismembering the chair sitting behind it – but for all her rage, nothing could touch the now-gaseous Shapeshifter.

"No!" she howled. _**"** NO!_ YOU DON'T GET TO JUST FLOAT AWAY! STAND AND FIGHT ME, YOU COWARD!"

"Last I looked, I was here for answers," the living fogbank grumbled.

"I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU AND KILL YOU AND KILL YOU AND _KILL YOU!"_

"Point taken. Now, if you'll excuse me…"

Abruptly, the cloud of vapour changed course and began coursing across the floor at a terrifying pace, new limbs began taking shape amidst the fog as it zeroed in on Mabel.

And without warning, the cloud stopped short, as if it had struck a brick wall.

"What the-"

Pacifica's first telekinetic blast scooped the semi-gaseous Shapeshifter into a helpless ball of writhing limbs and vapour. The next sent it soaring across the room all over again, bowling him headlong into a row of easy chairs sitting across from the elevator. Reverting to its natural form, the Shapeshifter lurched upright with a snarl, but Pacifica beat it to the punch: waving a doll-sized hand, she telekinetically snatched up all four easy chairs, the coffee table and the ottoman, and flung them at the Shapeshifter one by one. Unable to move in time, the monster was left squished against the carpet.

Once again, Wendy charged in from the left, axe held high – but by the time she brought it down, the Shapeshifter was on its feet again and darting across the room with preternatural speed.

"Fine," it hissed. "If that's the way you want it, I'm _done_ asking nicely."

Immediately, the Shapeshifter's left arm lanced outwards into a razor-sharp blade, six-feet long and almost two feet across, while its right arm elongated into a writhing mass of bullwhip-like tendrils. Then, it charged, parrying every swing of Wendy's axe with its own deadly edge and retaliating with swift lashes from its tentacles.

And then, just as Mabel was drawing her grappling hook to help, a telekinetic lasso draped itself around her waist and swept her into the air.

"Oh no you don't," said Pacifica, as she spirited her away. "You're not getting involved in this one, Mabel."

"But-"

"But nothing! You've barely gotten control of your powers, and I am _not_ going to lose another friend today. Plus, he wants _you,_ remember? I don't know what questions he'd planned on asking, but it probably won't mean anything good."

"What about Wendy?"

Several feet below them, the Shapeshifter let out a yelp of surprise as a jet of steaming acid erupted from Wendy's gaping maw.

"I think she's got the situation in hand," said Pacifica absently.

Eventually, the two descended to the nearest bit of cover, just past the open door to the back room, behind the ruined front desk. Unsurprisingly, Waddles, Preston and Priscilla were already here, hiding under the furniture.

"What the hell is that thing?" Preston gibbered.

"Pretty sure that's the Shapeshifter Wendy was talking about."

"Oh, brilliant! _What the hell are we going to do now?!"_

"Keep your voice down, Preston. Now…" Pacifica took a deep breath, assessing the situation as quickly as she could even as the battle raged on across the foyer. "First thing's first: we've just got to get that stuff off the door and get out of here."

"We're just going to leave?" Mabel demanded.

"I _said_ I was getting you to safety, didn't I?"

Preston looked blank. "You're not out for revenge then?" he asked.

This time, Pacifica could only sigh deeply and close her eyes, massaging her porcelain temples with tiny doll-like fingers. "Not the time, Preston."

"I just thought you'd have been first in line for revenge against that thing. I mean, didn't you have a crush on the Pines boy? You were hugging him back at the mansion, and you were angriest with me after it looked like he'd been-"

" _Really not the time, Preston,"_ Pacifica snapped, voice loudly cracking – and suddenly, her eyes were open and shining with tears.

For the first time since they'd been reunited, Mabel realized just how much strain Pacifica was under. All this time, she'd been carrying a torch for Dipper, secretly worrying about him and never letting it show; it had been clear from the little wobble she'd shown just outside the city that she was putting on a brave face, but now it was all too apparent that she hadn't just been hiding her concern for friends – but for someone she loved every bit as much as Dipper had loved Wendy. How long had she been secretly worrying about him, fearing for his life while doing her best to keep the rest of them safe? How could she have coped? Well, from what Dipper had told her right after the Northwest Mansion party, Pacifica had always been very good at acting and (more importantly) hiding her true feelings behind performances; even after all the transformations she'd undergone since then, perhaps that hadn't changed much.

Or perhaps she'd been hoping that she might get to see Dipper again and tell him how she _really_ felt about him. Now, though…

All three of them were mourning, in their own way: Wendy had turned brutal and remorseless; Pacifica was hiding behind a performance; and Mabel… Mabel couldn't even bring herself to get angry. Every time she found herself feeling something close to hatred for the Shapeshifter, it bled away just as quickly as it had appeared. What was _wrong_ with her?

There was a groan from the doorway, and everyone scrambled for improvised weapons as a crumpled shape tumbled into the room. Fortunately, it was just Gideon, dragging Amanda's unconscious body with him.

"What's going on out there?" Preston asked frantically. "Who's winning?"

"Nobody," Gideon replied, between ragged gasps for breath. "They're still tied. I think the Shapeshifter's losing temper though; it's getting bigger every minute. If we waste any more time, that thing's going to wreck the building just so he can kill Wendy."

There was a terrified silence, broken only by the sound of Wendy's berserker roars and the unpleasant _oozing_ sounds of metamorphosing flesh in motion.

"Is there anything we can do to stop it?" Mabel asked quietly.

"You're asking _me?_ You stopped this thing before; I'd have thought you'd have more of a clue than me!"

"We don't have a cryotube around this time."

"How about a walk-in freezer?" Pacifica suggested, clearly trying to recover as quickly as possible.

Gideon just laughed. "In _this_ city? Forget it."

"Well, you're supposed to be the psychic around here! I'd have thought you'd have some idea of what we're supposed to do next."

" _Fake_ psychic," Mabel added helpfully.

"Not anymore I'm not." Gideon took a deep breath. "Look, I'm not an expert, but I can read minds, and with a lot of effort, I can see the future. Not very useful right now, though: all I know is that _this_ is very important…" He drew a battered CD case from his jacket pocket, revealing the gaudy Babba logo on the cover.

"What about reading the Shapeshifter's mind? Can't you put some kind of whammy on it? Knock it out with your brain?"

"Some kind of- it doesn't work like that, Mabel. And I've tried reading its mind, but… it's like there are parts of it that have been sealed off or something, and the stuff I _can_ read doesn't make any sense: it wants to hurt us, but it doesn't; it wants revenge, but it just wants to ask us some questions; it wants to know about itself, and it doesn't know what it wants-"

"What do you mean it doesn't want to hurt us?" Pacifica exploded. "I got a giant flyswatter to the head, in case you hadn't noticed!"

"Hey, I'm just reporting here! It wants answers and it knows we can't supply them if we're dead, so maybe it's holding back – _maybe!"_

Mabel considered this. "Holding back," she echoed. There was a germ of an idea forming in the back of her head, a tiny ghost of a possibility; it was faint and hazy at best, and she couldn't quite grasp exactly what it meant, but it was there… and getting bigger with every passing second, fuelled almost by the sound of "Unforgettable" (which was on repeat by now).

"Like I said, maybe. I mean, with the way that thing's shapeshifting, it would have been easy to just turn into something bigger than the foyer and squish Wendy flat, but it hasn't yet."

"Did you ever find out _when_ that Babba album was meant to be used?"

"No. All I got from my visions was the song "Disco Girl," and this hotel."

"Then it could be now." Mabel thought for a moment. "Can you speak to me with these powers of yours?"

"Telepathically, sure. Why?"

"By the looks of things, we can't outfight the Shapeshifter. We're going to have to outthink it."

There was a pause.

"Then we're fucked, aren't we?"

" _PRESTON!"_

"I'm sorry, but it had to be said."

"Look," Mabel plunged on, "You said that the Shapeshifter doesn't really know what it wants, so maybe we can confuse it. Maybe that's how we use the album. Gideon, you're going to have to find the controls to the PA system and get it playing Babba – but only when I give the order. Just keep listening to my mind, okay?"

"What about the rest of us?" Preston asked.

"You stay here with Priscilla, Amanda and Waddles. Pacifica, you cover me."

"Why, what are you doing?"

Mabel hesitated, and then took what was probably the deepest breath she'd taken in her entire life. "I'm going to go answer the Shapeshifter's questions."

* * *

The transition was all but unnoticeable.

Shifty had been right in the middle of transforming into an Oregonian Tunnel Hydra, three newly-grown heads lashing out in Wendy's direction even as his body weaved away from the next swing of the she-mutant's axe; the next thing he knew, Wendy was gone…

And Mabel was standing perhaps ten feet away from him, pale, wide-eyed and sporting a faint patina of sweat, but sporting that same look of dogged determination shared by every single member of the Pines family he'd had the displeasure of meeting. Behind her, Pacifica stood in readiness, crackling with psychic energy… and behind _her_ , a very confused-looking Wendy was wrenching her axe free of the floorboards, clearly wondering what the hell had just happened.

There was a terrified pause, a tense silence that only grew all the more nerve-wracking the longer it stretched out. Shifty wasn't sure, but he had the distinct impression that nobody present had any real idea of what they were supposed to do next. Certainly, Mabel appeared to be reconsidering her choices in life and Pacifica had more than a little bit of the old "deer-in-the-headlights" look about her, while Wendy just looked bewildered.

In the end, Shifty himself was the one to break the impasse, reverting to his true form. Instantly, Wendy let out a snarl and took a step forward, axe raised to strike – only for Pacifica to telekinetically drag her back into position… and the response was nothing short of _explosive._

"LET GO OF ME!" she howled. "I'LL KILL HIM! I'LL BOIL HIM, I'LL FLAY HIM ALIVE, I'LL MAKE HIM _EAT HIMSELF!_ LET ME GO LET ME GO LET ME GO!"

"Wendy-"

"NO NO NO HE HAS TO DIE HE HAS TO DIE HE HAS TO DIE!"

"Wendy, just take a deep breath and calm down for a minute," Pacifica insisted. "Mabel knows what she's doing… I hope. Mabel, whatever you're going to do, you'd better do it quickly: I don't know how, but she's resisting my powers."

Shifty blinked, now gripped by uncertainty: he wasn't sure if he should take advantage of the sudden change in the battlefield to go on the attack or if she should simply let events take their course; in point of fact, he wasn't even sure what Mabel intended to do next – assuming she really was behind this strange state of affairs. Was this a trap, a new battle plan, a delaying tactic, or something else?

"You wanted to ask me questions," said Mabel, apprehensively. "Well, now's your chance: I'll tell you anything you want to know – if you promise not to hurt us."

"Just like that?" Shift asked, eyes narrowing.

"Just like that. Sound fair?"

Shifty considered this for a moment. "What's to stop you from letting Wendy off the leash as soon as my guard's down?"

"Yeah, because that's _really_ been a problem for you up until now," Pacifica deadpanned.

"Why the sudden truce, though?" he asked. "Up until a few minutes ago, you were hell-bent on running away before I could ask any pertinent questions."

"Jeez, can you blame us?" said Mabel. "You attacked first."

"And if I'd just appeared on the doorstep and started asking questions, you'd have said 'sure, no problem, ask me whatever you like.' Come on, Mabel."

"You could have pretended to be someone else, though."

"Fun as that would have been, even _you'd_ probably have gotten suspicious if friends and strangers had started interrogating you. So, I ask again, why the truce?"

Mabel shrugged. "Well, we're not going anywhere after what you did to the doors, so… I guess we might as well just get this over with. I mean, talking things sounds a lot better than getting caught in the middle of the next fight. So… ask away."

At this, Shifty began surreptitiously sprouting eyeballs in as many places as he could manage without the others noticing. This was clearly a trap: Mabel was quite obviously hiding something, and after all the trouble they'd gone to shut him away, she probably didn't trust them to spare her life once the quest. The same went for every other member of this band of misfits, all of whom were in on the plan…

"NO! YOU CAN'T TRUST HIM! HE'LL KILL YOU! HE'LL KILL ALL OF YOU!"

…all except Wendy, it seemed.

For now, though, his only alternative was more fruitless brawling. So, playing along seemed the best option at hand.

"Alright then," he began. "First thing's first: where's your brother?"

A bewildered silence followed. All of a sudden, the stunned mullet look was back on Mabel's face, and Pacifica had appeared to have joined the club for the time being; as for Wendy, she had stopped screaming and was now staring at him with a look of seething, borderline-apocalyptic rage. Was it Shifty's imagination, or was that _smoke_ rising from those glowing veins around her collarbone?

"What?" Mabel blurted at last.

Shifty offered a long-suffering sigh. "I thought I made myself clear, but apparently not. _Where… is… Dipper… Pines?"_

This time, the silence was even longer and even less pleasant than ever before.

"You killed him," said Mabel, her tone caught somewhere between confusion and anger.

Now it was Shifty's turn to look bewildered. "I'm sorry, _what?"_

Somewhere behind Mabel, the smouldering fuse on Wendy's temper, which hadn't been all that lengthy to begin with, suddenly vanished in a shower of sparks.

"YOU KILLED HIM!" she howled. "YOU KILLED HIM AND ATE HIM AND THEN YOU TRIED TO KILL ME AND NOW YOU'RE HERE PRETENDING THAT IT DIDN'T HAPPEN AND AND AND AND AAAAAAAAARGH!"

Tearing herself free of Pacifica's telekinetic grip, she threw down her axe and leaped a full twenty feet through the air straight at Shifty. Distracted as he was by the 'revelation' of Dipper's current whereabouts, Shifty barely had enough time to conjure a riot shield from his outstretched arm before she barrelled into him. With one almighty swing of her clawed feet, she kicked aside his shield – breaking every single bone in Shifty's arm in the process – and grabbed him by the throat. Then, free fist swinging wildly, she hammered him with a vicious procession of pulverizing blows, knocking two teeth free from his gaping jaws, fracturing several ribs, and tearing a trench across his undefended stomach with her daggerlike fingernails, spraying both of them with gouts of luminous green blood.

Dazed from the impacts and reeling from whatever toxin the demented redhead had coated her nails with, Shifty could barely focus on transforming: in earlier times, his first instinct would have been to return to his true form and deal with his attacker through brute force, but right now he was already in his true form and Wendy seemed just about immune to harm. Even Tzimisce hadn't given him _this_ much trouble. In the end, he at last managed to recover enough to take one emergency form – a beam of light, rippling out of Wendy's grip and soaring towards the ceiling.

Latching on to the highest point in the foyer's roof, well out of Wendy's reach, he finally reverted back to his true form. By then, thankfully, Pacifica and Mabel were already holding the screaming mutant back by both arms, allowing Shifty to divert some of his energies towards healing his many wounds.

Unfortunately, that left him free to listen to Wendy.

"YOU KILLED HIM!" she screeched. "YOU KILLED DIPPER!"

"For god's sake, I'm telling the truth! I had nothing to do with whatever happened to Dipper-"

"I _SAW_ YOU! YOU WERE THERE! YOU WERE THERE TO KILL ME TOO!"

"And where exactly is 'there,' exactly?"

"YOU KNOW DAMN WELL WHERE! YOU WERE STALKING ME ACROSS THOSE MOUNTAINS FOR _WEEKS!_ I _SAW_ YOU! YOU WERE FOLLOWING ME! _"_

"Mountains," Shifty echoed. "As in 'somewhere really cold,' yes? Polar temperatures, in other words."

For the first time since their duel had begun, a look of puzzlement crossed Wendy's face. "Yes," she conceded at last.

"Then what in the _hell_ would I be doing out there?"

"What… what do you mean?"

"Do you have _any idea_ what you put me through when you and that little bastard did when you shoved me into that cryotube? It might have frozen my body, but it didn't freeze my mind." He took a deep breath, and realized that with the threat of Wendy out of reach, he was once again simmering with rage. "For every single month I was in cryogenic suspension, _I was conscious!_ I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't _change!_ I couldn't even change! I could only stand there and think, and you know what I was thinking about when I wasn't daydreaming about the past? I WAS THINKING ABOUT HOW _COLD_ IT WAS! I spent months on end freezing to death but never dying, locked in a glass coffin at the bottom of a fallout shelter in some podunk shantytown with no company, no respite and no chance of escape, and now you think I'd be willing to follow you people _up a mountain_ and into the freezing snow? _For weeks on end?_ I can barely stand to be around air conditioning units now, and anything colder than that gives me goddamn flashbacks! Oh, I haven't even discussed the lingering claustrophobia you left me with – thank you very much for that, by the way."

But Wendy was shaking her head in utter incredulity. "No," she said softly; all the anger was gone from her voice, leaving behind only a blank, shocked monotone. "You can't be… I… no, it's not possible. I saw you. You were there. I hurt you. You… you had Dipper's hat."

By way of explanation, she drew a battered scrap of fabric from her backpack. Crumpled, bloodied and ragged though it was, it was still in one piece, and there was just enough of its original colour to identify it as Dipper's cap. "You were holding it your jaws," she said. "I… I saw you…"

Shifty threw up his hands in exasperation. "I've only been free for a couple of weeks, Wendy. I know, time's weird these days, but I literally haven't had the time to go traipsing up mountains. I've only just got out of cryo: Bill had one of his flunkies wake me up so I could hunt something called Axolotl, but I had other ideas. Since then, I've been following _Mabel_ 's trail – my best chance of finding Dipper, or so I thought – and it's led me all the way to Mabeland to this cesspool. So, riddle me this: why would I be wasting time in that diabetic nightmare if I'd already killed Dipper?"

Mabel's eyebrows rose. "If you really have been to Mabeland, what's it like at the moment?" she asked suspiciously. "What's been happening there?"

"I thought _I_ was going to be the one asking the questions-"

" _Answer me!"_

"When I got there, the place was still in a shambles from your escape, and Dippy Fresh was wearing an icepack over his junk. When I left, Mabeland was in ruins and Dippy Fresh was deader than a can of radioactive spam. Satisfied?"

Mabel and Pacifica exchanged glances. "He's telling the truth," Mabel said at last.

"B-but," Wendy stammered, "B-b-but it can't be-"

"Look" Pacifica lowered her voice to a whisper, but even with her voice barely in the audible range, Shifty was still able to pick it up with a few subtle adjustments to his ears. "Gideon's read his thoughts, Wendy. The Shapeshifter isn't lying."

"I-I-I don't understand… Bill said-"

"A lot of things," Pacifica finished; she was smiling in spite of herself – a grim and distinctly desperate rictus, but a smile nonetheless. "It wouldn't have been the first time he lied about something. Plus, Bill can do just about anything he likes: maybe he just had a hologram or something following you around, or maybe he had one of the Henchmaniacs pretending to be the Shapeshifter. Right now it doesn't matter: what matters is that for now, we don't know who really killed Dipper – in fact, we don't even know if Dipper's dead. Maybe he just fell to his death when Bill threw him out of the cave, or maybe he's still out there somewhere."

Wendy very slowly sank to her knees, an expression of dull, childlike confusion stamped on her face, her eyes focussing on a distant point on the horizon. "I-I-I thought… I was so sure, I… no, it can't be…" She shook her head again, briefly hiding her face behind her hands. "Trust no-one, because no-one lives long enough to be trusted," she intoned quietly. "Trust no-one, because no-one lives long enough to be trusted…"

As Pacifica gently led the shellshocked Wendy away to one of the ruined chairs, Shifty (now fully healed) lowered himself back to the floor, where Mabel promptly rounded on him, her face suddenly alight with curiosity. "So you don't have any idea where Dipper is, or if he's still alive," she said. "But what do you want him for?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Shifty snapped. "I want revenge!"

But was it? With all the random intrusive thoughts buzzing around his head, did he really know what he wanted with Dipper – or anyone else for that matter?

"I want him _worse-_ than-dead!" he continued, shrugging off his doubts as best as he could. "I want to make him suffer for sealing me in that cryotube! For giving me a split-second glimpse of everything I'd wanted for the last _thirty_ years and then snatching it all away the moment I took a chance to savour it – and not just my freedom, either: now, Ford's Journal's are gone forever, burned by Bill! There was a treasure trove of shapes in there, species either extinct or changed beyond recognition, and now I'll never get a chance to take on any of those wonderful shapes because your _idiot_ brother decided to try defeating Bill single-handedly!"

"But why Dipper?"

"Wha… _weren't you listening to me?!"_

"Yeah, I heard, but why _just_ Dipper? Wendy helped shove you into the cryotube as well, don't forget. You could have killed her the moment we walked in the door, but you didn't; you only tried to knock her out. And what about me? I was the one who actually pressed the button and froze you. Why haven't you tried to kill me? Why don't you hate me as much as Dipper?"

Shifty opened his mouth to reply, only to find his planned response absent without leave. As infuriating as it was to admit it, Mabel had a point: why _didn't_ he hate her? More to the point, why _couldn't_ he hate her? Time and again, he'd had plenty of opportunities to kill her, Wendy and Ford through countless different methods, but on every occasion his instincts had stayed his hand. What was it about Dipper that drew so much loathing that he had none of it to spare for anyone else?

"And about the Journals…" Mabel took a deep breath, and appeared to be steeling herself for a moment. "They wouldn't have been burned if Weirdmageddon hadn't happened either, would they?"

"…no, but I fail to see how that's relev-"

"Then that's my fault as well, isn't it?"

Pacifica let out a strangled gasp of horror. "Mabel, don't-"

"Weirdmageddon only happened because I gave the rift to Bill. I mean, I thought he was Blendin Blandin, but that's no excuse, is it? I wanted more summer, more time with Dipper, because I thought I was going to lose him forever. So, I made a deal. My deal, my fault."

Shifty could only stare in disbelief for a moment, mind reeling at the spectacle. Once again, his head was full of emotions and impulses that made no sense: surprise would have been understandable, maybe even shock, but why was he listening to this little confession and feeling horror at everything he was hearing? Why the sudden surge of grief and remorse? Why wasn't he feeling angry – _insanely_ angry – at Mabel? After all, the loss of the Journals were her fault, just as she said. So why couldn't he find it in his heart to genuinely hate her?

"You want to kill Dipper?" Mabel continued. "You want him 'worse-than-dead?' You might never find him, and besides, what happened to the Journals wasn't his fault. So why not hurt someone who really deserves it? So if you really want to take revenge on someone, you should start with me."

* * *

Some distance away, Gideon jumped the gun.

He'd been listening to everything Mabel had said, and for the last minute or so, he'd been locked in a state of almost blind panic: he wasn't an expert on psychically eavesdropping on conversations while under pressure, but even he couldn't mishear what had just been spoken, not when he'd heard it through no less than three sets of ears. Under normal circumstances, he'd have thought this was all part of Mabel's plan, some clever trap to stop the Shapeshifter once and for all… but he was still telepathically connected to her brain, listening for orders, and he could tell that something was very, very wrong.

Then again, the warning signs had been visible right from the get-go; the moment they'd met again outside Preacher's Pass, it'd been clear that there was something very different about Mabel. Just like Pacifica and Wendy, she'd changed, and not necessarily for the better: he'd seen none of the familiar quirky mannerisms, the heedlessly explosive enthusiasm, the exuberant creativity; the wild, vivacious girl he'd met so many months ago was gone, the enchantingly eccentric spark that had first drawn him to her snuffed out. Hearing the news of Dipper's "death" had clearly affected her very badly, but even that couldn't explain the shift in her personality. What had Bill _done_ to her back in her playground? What could have possibly driven her to do… _this?_

 _I'm listening to a suicide attempt. That's the only logical explanation what I heard. I'm listening to Mabel's attempt to commit suicide by Shapeshifter, and I'm just STANDING HERE WAITING FOR ORDERS._

By then, Gideon had finally located the controls to the lobby PA system, and had spent a nerve-wracking five minutes pacing back and forth in front of it as the confrontation had played out in the distance. So, as soon as he heard Mabel's final offer to the Shapeshifter, he made a wild dash for the control panel ahead of schedule, readying the Babba album as he ran.

All things considered, this was perhaps the single biggest longshot he'd ever taken in his long career of audacious cons and schemes, but right now he was out of ideas, and to be brutally honest, there wasn't much else he could do under the circumstances anyway: he was unarmed, his psychic powers were best used for communication and surveillance, and he wouldn't last two seconds in hand-to-hand combat – assuming the Shapeshifter deigned to stop laughing long enough to actually fight him. In the end, all he had was a distraction, and the dim hope that his vision of the future was accurate.

From what he could tell, the music was being provided by an antiquated CD player hooked up to the PA system, but upon opening it up, he couldn't find a disc in the machine. Somehow, the damn thing was playing "Unforgettable" of its own accord. Fortunately, the music stopped as soon as he put the Babba disc in the player,

Moments later, "Disco Girl" roared to life, hammering the surrounding foyer with the familiar sounds of Icelandic warbling... but for a few seconds, there was another sound just audible under the opening bars of the song: a voice whispering **"You are all made of stars,"** followed by a deep, bubbling ripple of laughter.

Gideon could only watch and pray that he'd done the right thing.

* * *

Mabel groaned. "I told you to wait, Gideon," she muttered under her breath. Out loud, she continued: "Look, do you really want revenge or not?"

But Shifty was only barely paying attention. The moment the music had started play, his mind had suddenly been awash with visions of multi-headed bears and embarrassing conversations in diners, and all things considered, this made even less sense than his usual intrusive thoughts. For one thing, he'd never even _been_ to a diner in his lifetime. At first, he tried to dismiss it as another quirk of his increasingly-unfathomable brain, but the more of the song he heard, the more certain he was that he'd heard it before. But where? Ford wouldn't have been caught dead listening to anything like this, Fiddleford would have beaten himself to death with his own banjo rather than sit through it, and they were the only people in the last thirty years who'd ever given him access to a radio. So where had he heard it? Why was it making his head throb? Why did it summon up a thousand new inexplicable thoughts? And why was it so catchy?

 _Disco girl_

 _Coming through_

 _That girl is you…_

Too late, Shifty realized he was singing along with the music, and clapped a hand over his mouth – as if that would somehow stop the words from escaping – but already, Mabel, Pacifica and even poor shellshocked Wendy had noticed. And there was something else, too: for just a few seconds, his voice had changed. Without even meaning to, he'd adopted a different voice while singing the song, and he didn't recognize it… but it was plain from the looks on their faces that the others did.

"You like the song?" Mabel asked. Once again, that look of insatiable curiosity was back on her face, and the more she stared, the more uncomfortable Shifty became.

"I've never heard it before," he admitted.

"You're reciting the lyrics off by heart."

"Yes, well, they're very predictable."

Once again, Shifty had the distinct impression of wheel and gears spinning at the speed of light inside Mabel's brain. What was the demented human child doing now? What was she planning?

"Why _do_ you hate Dipper so much?" she asked.

"I think we've already covered this-"

"No we haven't! You still haven't explained why you want revenge on Dipper and not me, Wendy, or even Soos! Why do you hate Dipper more than any of us?"

" _Because I always have!"_ Shifty exploded. "I've hated him ever since I first heard that stupid, self-important, self-pitying whining voice of his echoing down the caverns, and the longer I've known him, the little bastard just keeps giving me excuses to hate him! Just watching him in action has been like being stuck in the path of a veritable _avalanche_ of weakness and incompetence! I mean, he couldn't even solve a simple murder mystery without getting humiliated, he got his ass kicked by _Gideon_ of all people, he screwed up a romantic night with Wendy even though he had the help of an entire platoon of clones, the prospect of fighting Robbie – I repeat, _Robbie_ – scared him so much he recruited a _video game character_ for help, his height anxieties played right into Gideon's hands, he nearly got an entire trick-or-treating party killed because of his need to keep up appearances, and he almost handed total victory to Gideon because he wasted half the dream journey on pre-teen angst when he should have been focussing on the mission at hand… and that's just the first half of the summer! After accidentally summoning a zombie horde, making a deal with Bill, botching a simple exorcism at the Northwest Mansion, wrecking Project Mentem, and getting the Journals incinerated, I think I'm well within my rights to give the brat some well-deserved comeuppance! So tell me, does that sound like a good enough reason to hate him, or do I have to bring up all the other annoying things he's done?"

He took a deep breath; he had a headache now, and the intrusive thoughts were worse than ever.

Mabel's eyes narrowed. "How did you know about any of that?"

Shifty froze, realizing he'd been letting his mouth run wild independent of his brain. "Beg pardon?" he said weakly.

"You were underground for the first half of the summer, remember? You couldn't have known about the murder mystery or that stuff about the clones."

"And after that, you were in cryosleep," Pacifica pointed out. "You couldn't have known about what happened at the mansion – or even about the Journals being burnt – and even if someone like Bill told you about it, you were talking as though you actually watched it happen. So how could you know about it?"

There was a heartstopping pause, as Shifty tried and failed to think of a convincing excuse that would somehow make this embarrassing conversation end before it got any worse. "I… I don't know," he said at last.

"Well that's no answer. How could you have found out about that?"

"…I swear, I don't know."

There was a muffled _thud_ from across the room; it seemed as though Wendy had managed to recover enough to retrieve her axe, and was now repeatedly hammering it into the floor for little more than emphasis. " _Answer them,"_ she hissed.

" _I don't know!"_ Shifty erupted, voice rising to a scream; suddenly, it seemed as though all the confusions that had been building up over the last thirty years could no longer remain unmentioned, and before he could stop himself, his mouth was once again working ahead of his brain, giving full vent to his spleen.

"I've spent almost my entire life with thoughts that don't make sense, impulses that tell me to act _nonsensically!_ I keep suffering déjà vu! Strangers look like people I've known for years! I somehow correctly guess names and addresses I couldn't possibly have known! When I was younger, I was always worrying that the Journals had already been burned – while they were still being written! I kept passing up opportunities to kill you people, even though it would have meant losing the Journal! I could have ripped your head off back in the bunker, but I couldn't do it – and I ended up getting an axe in the chest because I hesitated! I keep mentioning things that don't make sense – my last message to Dipper, I didn't even know what I _meant!_ I don't know what I want half the time! When I came up with the idea of hunting you down, I didn't know what the hell I was going to do: I didn't know if I wanted to get revenge or if I wanted to learn more about myself or if I wanted to ask for directions to Dipper or if I could get you to explain what was happening to me! _And now I don't know why that song seems so goddamn familiar!_ Are you satisfied now? I hope so, because I don't think I'll be anytime soon! Also, _why the hell am I telling you anything? I'm supposed to be the one asking questions here!_ AND WHY IS THERE A PIG SNIFFING ME?!"

As it happened, the tagalong pig of the group had crept out of hiding at some point during the last few seconds of ranting, and was now curiously sniffing at Shifty's spidery legs.

"Waddles!" Mabel hissed. "Get back from there!"

But Waddles didn't seem in the mood to budge from his position. If anything, he seemed content to sit on his haunches and oink happily up at Shifty. For his part, Shifty wasn't sure how to respond; something about this animal seemed familiar, but he couldn't explain why… and the more he thought about it, the more his head ached and echoed with unwanted impulses.

"He really seems to like you," said Mabel. Once again, that curious-verging-on-suspicious tone was back in her voice. "I've only ever seen him do that around people he knows. Can you change the way you smell or something like that?"

"I'm not doing anything."

"Then why'd he do that? It's not like he knows you or… anything… like… th…" Mabel very slowly trailed off, eyes widening in astonishment as some unknown train of thought arrived at her station. "Oh my _god,_ " she said quietly.

Then, without warning, she turned around and sprinted off in the general direction of the entrance, and began a frantic search among the splintered furniture scattered in front of the door. "Where did it go?!" she yelled, oblivious to the confused stares following her across the foyer. "Where – did – it – go?"

"What are you doing?"

"It fell somewhere near here! I know it did!"

"What the _hell_ are you talking about?"

"HA! Found it!"

At last, Mabel got to her feet holding a familiar looking leather-bound book; for one heart-leaping instant, Shifty almost mistook it for one of the Journals, but then he saw the raised middle finger on the cover and realized this wasn't so; it was, in fact, the book that Mabel had been clutching when he'd first ambushed them.

"I read a few pages back when you first gave this to me, Wendy," Mabel muttered, "But I wasn't really paying attention to any of it, but I swore I caught something about it here…" Leafing through the book for a moment, she excitedly pointed at one of the pages. "Dipper was _transforming!"_ she exclaimed. "That's what this entire journal was about: Bill made him transform every step of the journey, and made him write about it! That's right, isn't it, Wendy?"

"Yes, but-"

"And towards the end, Dipper was writing about how Bill was changing him permanently, making his human form different – and after that, the two of you were separated! Now, we know Bill can control time – he can control almost anything! So what if Dipper didn't die when he fell? What if he was just transported back through time?"

"You mean-"

"It _has_ to be, it's the only thing that makes sense! I mean, Ford told us he never found out who or what laid the Shapeshifter's egg in the first place!"

"What are you talking about?" Shifty demanded. But something in the back of his head was beginning to rumble unpleasantly, worse than any headache, irrational thoughts and impossible memories creeping into his brain from all sides.

Mabel let out a whoop of near-hysterical laughter, and Shifty realized with some confusion that she was now broaching the distance between them, seemingly with no regard to her own safety. "You've been looking for Dipper all this time so you could get revenge," she said excitedly, "but all this time, he's been right here!"

" _What?"_

"It all makes sense! You know "Disco Girl" off by heart, even though you've never heard it before; you keep having thoughts that don't make sense; you didn't kill Wendy and you don't know why; you warned Dipper about what would happen at Northwest Mansion; you know all about what Dipper did in the summer even though you weren't there for it; Gideon says there's parts of your brain that have been sealed off… and Waddles knows you!"

The rumbling in Shifty's head sounded again; someone was hammering at a locked door in the back of his mind, someone on the other side trying furiously to get in, and once again, Shifty couldn't explain how he knew this. All he knew was that every word that Mabel said was drawing him closer to the door, and with every step he took, he was reaching out to open it.

Mabel was standing right in front of him now, pale and trembling but somehow unafraid. Her eyes were shining with tears, yet the smile on her face refused to budge.

"Don't you see?" she said. "You're my brother. _You're Dipper."_

Silence.

In that instant, everyone was left mute with shock: Gideon was staring at them from around a corner, his face pale and utterly astonished; Wendy was once again poleaxed, her eyes locked in a thousand-yard stare; Pacifica was hovering in place, caught between hope and caution. And Shifty could only stand there, boggling in disbelief. He wanted to tell her she was wrong, that she was insane, that he _knew_ who he was, but in that moment, all he could think of was the door in the back of his mind. Someone on the other side of the door recognized his own name… and Shifty had the most peculiar feeling that this someone was _him._

Suddenly, Mabel was in motion: before Shifty could react, he had a demented thirteen-year-old flinging her arms around his waist and hugging him as though her life depended on it.

And with that, the door inside his mind swung open, and a thick tide of memories rippled out across his brain.

Suddenly, he knew.

He remembered everything – his life before, his life after, and worst of all the great and terrible moment that Bill had sent him plummeting him into the void of the past, had torn his being to shreds and planted him in the earth for Ford to find.

He was Dipper – but he was also Shifty – but he was also Dipper – but he was also Shifty – but he was also Dipper – but…

Who was he?

Somewhere in that oppressively silent foyer, a being who couldn't possibly be Dipper Pines but couldn't realistically be Shifty took a deep breath, opened his mouth, and began to scream.

* * *

The scream caught them all off-guard

Wriggling out of Mabel's grip with one wild lurch of his suddenly-shapeless body, the Shapeshifter scrambled helplessly away, asymmetric hands gripping his skull as if he was afraid it might fly off his neck.

"No!" he shrieked, his voice changing even as he spoke, shifting from old to young, male to female, human to beast and back again. "No, no, I'm not – no, I'm – but I'm – he's not – I'm him, but – how can I be –"

He screamed again, his body shifting uncontrollably: one moment he was human, then he was the Shapeshifter; then he was the baked beans mascot, then a giant floating octopus with razor-lined tentacles, then an eight-foot-tall dragon breathing gouts of electric-blue flame, then a living mass of molten gold in a vaguely-humanoid shape, then a sea urchin, then Mabel, then Wendy, then Pacifica, then Grunkle Ford, then Grunkle Stan – on and on it went, never retaining a single form for much longer than five seconds at a time.

"STOP IT!" the Shapeshifter howled. "STOP _ME!"_

Suddenly, he was every single form at once, every single shape he'd ever taken in his life merged and conjoined into a forty-foot-wide blob of living matter oozing across the form, dozens upon dozens of monsters and beings and features and identities fused into one repulsive gestalt. For thirty heartstopping seconds, it writhed helplessly in place, clawing at the air with arms and fins and paws and tentacles and wings, struggling for a grip on the world around it even as its collaged body struggled to maintain equilibrium between the organs that composed it.

Then, from a hundred thousand distorted mouths, it screamed, "HELLLLPPPP MEEEEEEEEEE!"

And then, the mass of bodies changed again, shrinking and dwindling away until all that was left was a single human form lying slumped on the floor.

Dipper Pines looked out at the world for the first time in his new life, and began to cry.

For a full minute, he lay there, curled into a ball and sobbing into his knees. And when he finally got to his feet again, he did so only with great difficulty, legs wobbling like a newborn foal; he might have fallen over if Mabel hadn't hurried over and helped him up.

"Mabel?" he said; his voice shook wildly, waving near-constantly between Dipper's own voice and the hellish baritone of the Shapeshifter.

His face was pale and glistening with sweat, his eyes fluttering wildly, almost as if he was on the brink of passing out, and as he took a step forward, he began to change again, shapeshifting uncontrollably from one form to another and back again.

"Mabel?" he called again. "Is that you?"

"Yes, Dipper, it's me."

"Who am I? He remembers now – no, _I_ remember, and so does Shifty… but _I'm_ Shifty-"

"Dipper, you need to relax! You're sick; you look as though you're about to drop."

"No, no, you don't understand! Shifty, he… I… I've killed people. I've wanted to kill so many more. I wanted to do awful things to people, and I… oh god, I'm a monster, but I'm…"

"It's okay, bro-bro, it wasn't you-"

" _Yes it was!"_ Dipper screamed, shifting wildly from human to guinea pig to Gremlobin and back again. _"It's always been me!_ Bill locked part of me away, but the rest of me had a choice, and I chose to hurt people and kill people and… it wasn't just Shifty, it was me, because I am Shifty… but I'm also Dipper… and…"

He let out a choked gasp, staggered over to the nearest wastebin and promptly threw up. Mabel caught him by the shoulders just before he toppled over, and held him up he went on puking, keeping him from toppling over until he'd finished. But by the time he was done, Dipper looked even paler and sicker than ever before, and transforming even quicker than before.

"I'm thirteen," he whimpered. "But I've been alive for over thirty years. I was born human, but I was born a shapeshifter. I know who my mom and dad are, but I also know I'm an orphan. I didn't meet Grunkle Ford until this summer, but he raised me from the moment I hatched. I've had family, friends, people who loved me… but I've been alone underground for years and never met anyone else until you found me. I know you're my sister, but my memories say I barely know you." He let out a choked sob of grief and confusion. "I don't know who I am and it's driving me insane!"

Dipper looked up at her, eyes wide and terrified. "Who am I, Mabel?" he begged, on the verge of tears again; he was hanging onto the wall, now, struggling to keep himself awake. "Please, I can't tell anymore. Am I Dipper or Shifty? Am I a human or a monster? Who am I? _Who am I supposed to be?"_

"It doesn't matter," said Mabel gently. "I don't care if you're a shapeshifter or a human or whatever you really are. You're my brother: that's all that matters."

For a moment, Dipper's sickly face registered something almost akin to relief. Then he collapsed bonelessly into Mabel's outstretched arms – still shapeshifting, still warping uncontrollably from one shape to another, but at long last, asleep.

At peace.

For now.

* * *

 **A/N: Aaaw, ain't that cute?**

 **Well, it looks like Dipper's back again, and I think he'll be much more useful to me like this, don't you?**

 **Shifty didn't listen to me, didn't want me as a friend – but Dipper… Dipper's a different story altogether. A lost little Shapeshifter with no confidence in himself, no way of trusting his own memories, and a boatload of nightmares on the way? I think he'll be in need of friends, and I can be a very, very good friend indeed.**

 **But that's a chapter for another day. For now, I'm signing off and letting Straightjacketed have this story back. But don't worry; I'll always have some time to spare for you, when I'm not out there among our heroes.**

 **Meanwhile, since you've been such a lovely audience, I might as well give you a code.**

 **Gsvb hzb sv dzh gsv urihg gl uzoo  
Zmw mld sv glroh zg Xrksvi'h xzoo  
Gsv nzhgvi xizughnzm hxfokgh gsv vmw  
Yfg xzm sv bvg ivnvnyvi uirvmwh?**

 **Think about what I said earlier, friends and neighbours: once, I was just a dream made flesh; now I'm flesh made dream. You can be too, folks, you can be too.**

 **See ya…**


	33. Things Broken But Reforged

A/N: Happy New Year, ladies and gentlemen! Sorry for the Christmas delay, everyone, but December kept me buried under work and family commitments. At last, I'm back... and now it's time for the new year's warmup to begin!

Anyway, I've spent enough time rambling: it's time to begin the first chapter of the New Year! Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: _Gravity Falls_ is not mine. At this point, nothing is mine except for the delays between chapters.

* * *

 **...ybdnats no nrocpop fo tekcub ym evah I .dekaf neeb lla evah epahS suohpromA morf sllac enohp tsal eht taht sezilaer yllanif neeterp dedaeh-ytniop eht nehw gnitseretni eb ot gniog s'ti ,derussa tseR .egdelwonk sih tuohtiw seceip ot gnillaf dnuorgyalp s'lliB fo retpahc rehtona yojne esaelp ,emitnaem eht nI .mih htiw drow a evah nac I sa noos sa tsuj htiw tlaed eb ll'eh - mlac niamer esaelp ;ortni eht ni flesmih fo ecnasiun a gnikam llits si nhoJ ,wonk I ,sey ,seY .gnikaeps petohtalrayN si sihT**

* * *

After what felt like an eternity, the endless panorama of ruined planets and distorted dimensions faded away, to be replaced solid walls of weathered concrete, rusting girders and clustered bundles of ancient pipework. Finally, the Stanmobile II touched down with a jolt… but it was still at least thirty seconds before Stan felt safe enough to let go of the reins and step onto solid ground. Travelling by chariot through infinity was something he still hadn't adjusted to, but then again, even after all the powers he'd gained and all the weird things he'd seen, he doubted that he'd _ever_ get used to being the literal other half of Death – or the Grim Reaper Duo, as he'd jokingly taken to calling them.

"We made it?" he asked, scarcely daring to believe it himself.

" **mlaeR eramthgiN eht ekil tsuj saw tI,"** said Ford. He'd hovered away, and was now floating in the centre of the room, his galactic eyes blinking away tears. **"yelnatS ,lufituaeb os saw ti ...seixalag nellaf ot setag derettahs eht ,snoisulli lacitpo fo senorht eht ,ssendam elbisserperri dna cigol naedilcue-non fo shtap gnitsiwt ehT."**

"Uh, Ford? You need to focus on speaking English, or at least something not totally crazy."

Stan paused, and looked more closely at the room around them: they'd emerged in what looked like an old boiler room, but much larger and far more ominous than any of the usual dank industrial basements he'd had the displeasure of encountering during his time wandering the country. True, it had the usual fixtures – a dilapidated furnace, twisted old pipes, rumbling banks of machinery, corroded metal tanks of god only knew what, and eerily spacious-looking lockers.

However, there was something quite clearly _off_ about the place: the hissing of the pipes sounded uncannily like muffled human screams; the light cast by the fluorescents seemed to _ooze_ like liquid across anything it touched; leering human faces could be seen in every puff of smoke and jet of steam to emerge from the surrounding machinery; the furnace stank of overcooked pork and scorched bone… and just to the right of that colossal incinerator, there was a small cart lurking under a length of soaking-wet tarpaulin. Stan couldn't tell what was under it from here, but by now, he didn't need to: after all these years of danger and grifting, he knew that metallic smell off by heart.

"Where are we?" he asked.

" **The Forge of the Gods. Hell's Toy Store. The Manufactorium."**

"Really not telling me that much, Ford."

" **This is a place where special entertainment is built for tasks too dull for Henchmaniacs. This is where Hephaestus has been chained to the anvil of his genius."**

"Who?"

" **The first to fall. He who spoke the Truth of Cassandra. Broken friendships and broken memories. His mind is shattered once again and all the fragments fade like smoke in the wind…"** Ford took a breath, and seemed to collect himself. **"Fiddleford,"** he said at last. **"He's here somewhere."**

"You mean we're here to rescue McGucket?"

" **Uiln Yroo zmw uiln srnhvou. R xzm'g gvoo dsrxs droo yv nliv wruurxfog: gsviv ziv ornrgh gl dszg R xzm xovziob hvv."** And with that, Ford began floating away, out through the door and down the shadowy corridor.

Of course, Stan had no idea what the hell he'd talking about, but judging from that slight nod of Ford's head, the whole "rescuing McGucket" business was more-or-less right. In any case, whatever the old nerd had in mind, it was better than standing around and trying to figure out just how many corpses had been dumped in this incinerator over the last few months. So, taking to his heels, he followed Ford into the hallway.

Immediately, he was struck by the sheer vastness of the complex: though the corridor was barely wide enough to allow them through without bruising their elbows, it was so tall that the ceiling was just about invisible – assuming there was a ceiling. It was like crawling through an alleyway at the base of a skyscraper, looking up into a colossal expanse of catwalks, observation platforms, hatchways, whirling gears, thundering pistons and all manner of other machinery. He could even glimpse, thousands of feet above them, a network of shatterproof glass tubes spanning the alleyway like bridges, connecting the chambers of this strange Forge like veins… and unless Stan was horribly wrong, he could just about recognize the shapes of people walking through those glass roadways – or what _looked_ like people, at any rate.

And it wasn't just the height or scale of the building, either: the alleyway went on for almost a thousand yards before they finally emerged into a concourse that could have comfortably accommodated a stadium or five and still have enough room to fit a few football fields in for good measure. Words like "giant" or "massive" didn't really do this complex justice: it was just _**Big,**_ with a capital B. And all of it was taken up by machines that would have made the manufacturing plants of Detroit look tiny, a veritable metropolis of fully-automated factory engines on display, all of them hard at work on hundreds upon thousands of mechanical components: some assembly lines were producing nothing but arms, others were churning out glittering metallic eyes by the dozen, and other still were piecing together a wicked assortment of guns and bladed instruments. There were even vehicle assembly plants here, piecing together everything from tanks to airship.

And yet, nothing was being sent towards the exits: all the signs pointed clearly to garages and exits where all this junk could presumably be shipped off to whatever unsuspecting country Bill felt like waging war on for a laugh, and none of the automated mechanisms were sending the products in that direction. Instead, everything was being sent upstairs on a series of conveyer belts flowing directly upwards, much of them alongside several extremely lengthy spiral staircases.

"Are we following all that stuff up to the top floor?" Stan asked, nodding at the conveyer belts.

Ford nodded simply. Evidently, he was learning quickly that he couldn't make himself understood without great effort; either that, or he was preoccupied with things that Stan couldn't see – again.

"Is that where they're keeping Fiddleford?"

Another curt nod. **"And the heart of the Manufactory: the Ruinous Toymaker's workshop."**

Stan opened his mouth to ask who the hell the Ruinous Toymaker could be, but then thought better of it. "Any idea what we're up against? How's he being imprisoned?"

" **Drgslfg olxph, drgslfg yzih, drgslfg dzooh. Rh z kirhlmvi hgroo z kirhlmvi ru sv xzmmlg ivnvnyvi yvrmt lmv? Z-"** Ford took a deep breath. **"I have some idea,"** he translated. **"He may have safeguards against retrieval. Be ready."**

"Fan-frigging-tastic. Alright, Ford, lead the way."

Thankfully, neither of them needed to take the stairs: by now, levitation was child's play – and just as well, too, because each spiral staircase looked to be upwards of a thousand feet tall. In fact, as the two of them swiftly ascended through the air, Stan got the distinct impression that the stairs were there only to punish the unlucky groundlings who hadn't been able to weave their way through the tangle of machinery to reach the elevators. As if to add insult to injury, what little Stan could see of the "finished products," most of them appeared to _leave_ the area either on hovering troop carriers or via the elevated roadway he'd seen earlier, so the stairs had probably only been put there as a cruel joke on visitors who couldn't fly or teleport.

It took less than five minutes of levitation to reach the topmost level, and when they finally hovered to a halt on the oil-soaked concrete floor of the workshop, Stan found himself standing in what almost looked like a completely different building. It looked as though it had once been another factory floor: rusted chunks of derelict machinery still protruded from the floor, decaying catwalks hung over most of it, and there were even glimpses of what looked like employee lounges, kitchens and restrooms – all things that had been absent downstairs. This might have almost been a normal factory where ordinary human beings had worked, but now most of the machines had been ripped out and replaced with what could only be a loading dock.

Here were parked at least three gargoyle-like troop carriers, their canopies shaped into ghastly-looking eyes of luminous red glass, their forward weapons outthrust like clawed hands; they even had wings – and given how little reality mattered these days, perhaps they worked better than engines. And lining up to enter them were…

…the finished product.

They weren't entirely machine. That was easily the worst part: true, these thing were more metal than flesh now, their bodies layered with that eerily crimson armour that looked more like shaped coral than steel. True, their arms and legs had been replaced with devastating mechanical prosthetics, and all of them now moved in weird and distressing new ways. True, their eyes were a dull, glistening red; and yes, all of the figures standing before him were armed with impossible weapons that oozed and writhed and gurgled in their pincer-like hands. But for all that, they still had just enough of their faces left to let you know that they'd once been human.

Stan had seen a great many strange and disturbing things since Weirdmageddon had gone global, and even more now that he'd been empowered with magic – God only knew his new abilities had shown him things that would have frozen his blood, if only he'd had some left. But _this_ , this hideous army of mechanized meat, this ghastly parade of scar tissue and stapled skin and gleaming red metal… this had to be among the worst.

" **These are the Rust Thralls,"** said Ford softly. **"This is the work of the Ruinous Toymaker."**

For once, Stan didn't need any further info: his imagination was giving him all the grisly details he'd never asked for.

As they approached, some of the Rust Thralls looked up, dozens upon dozens of mechanical eyes focussing on them with an ominous chorus of whirrs, and for a moment Stan prepared himself to fight. But to his surprise, none of the soldiers attacked or even moved to stop them, but simply studied them for a moment, and then returned to their queues. A few of them even saluted, voiceboxes issuing worshipful murmurs as they passed by.

"What's up with them?" Stan whispered.

" **They were expecting us."**

"Then why didn't they shoot us on sight?"

" **Because they know what we are. Bill told them that the Horsemen would be the greatest of his toys. They were told that Death would be here to claim what was owed… and we are Death. They don't see that we've gamed the system: they only see the power of Death, split between us."**

"Oh. Do you think they'll turn on us when we get McGucket out of here?"

" **Unlikely. Vevm R'n mlg hfiv ru dv xzm tvg Urwwovuliw lfg lu sviv."**

"'scuse me?"

A pained look crossed Ford's unearthly face. **"Nothing,"** he lied. **"Let's move on."**

The path ahead drew them swiftly away from the loading dock, and into a thick billowing cloud of toxic mist and scalding steam – easily recognized as such by the carpet of dead insects and boiled rats that had tried to pass through earlier. Even the floor looked discoloured by all the lethal chemicals in the air. And yet, the fog parted easily at Ford's approach and not a drop of poison seemed to touch him; meanwhile, Stan followed on even as the chaos poured down on him, somehow remaining perfectly unscathed.

Past the sickly clouds, the Workshop loomed ahead, a glistening steel platform at the heart of the old building: elevated several feet above the factory floor, it was ablaze with fluorescent lights and surrounded by tray after tray of robotic components, each one regularly replenished by the conveyer belts circling high above the platform. At the centre of the room was a hospital bed, currently occupied by a vaguely human-shaped figure, covered in a white sheet and tied down with leather straps.

Immediately, Stan hurried up the stairs towards the bed, for once in the lead. He didn't know what was going on up here or why McGucket was being imprisoned up here, but he knew for a fact that the sooner they freed him, the sooner they could all get out of this industrial cesspit. So, he quickly went about undoing the straps that secured the patient to the bed, though he just as quickly discovered that with his newfound strength, he could just as easily rip the straps off entirely. As he did so, the figure on the bed began to stir and writhe, and from atop the pillow, muffled groans and whimpers began to issue from under the sheet.

"Relax, you old geezer," Stan muttered. "It's us. Now you just pipe down and let us get you out of this hoosegow; everything's gonna to be okay. So if you could…"

From under the sheet, there came a loud, keening moan of pain, and before Stan could finish his sentence, the final strap gave way, taking the sheet with it; with an unpleasant jolt of the heart, Stan realized that the figure under the covers wasn't McGucket at all.

It was Candy Chiu.

She now wore a stark white hospital gown, her glasses were gone, her dark hair was bound in a shower cap, and from the looks of things she'd seen far too many hungry days and sleepless nights in the last couple of months, but it was unmistakeably her. In fact, it wasn't until Stan happened to glance down at her hands that he realized that something was horribly wrong.

The fingers of Candy's left hand had been surgically removed and replaced with long, needle-tipped spines – each one made of the same coral-like material that the Rust Thralls had been built from. And as her eyes finally flickered open, Stan realized that the transformation hadn't stopped at the fingers. Looking back at him from Candy's bruised eye sockets were a pair of garnet-coloured spheres of polished coral, swivelling and shifting to focus on Stan's face with eerie mechanical precision.

"Let me stay," she whispered, eyelids fluttering wildly. Stan wasn't sure, but he had the distinct impression that Candy wasn't fully conscious – either riding the anaesthesia train to Christ-only-knew where, or delirious from infection. "Let me stay," she repeated. "I'll be a good soldier. Whatever Bill wants."

"What? Candy, what are you doing here?

"Please… I don't want to be tired. I don't want to be weak. Don't send me back to my cell. I can't take it. Bill won't let me sleep anymore, and it hurts so much, it hurts just to breathe… please, let me stay here. The Toymaker's going to make me new. I won't _have_ to sleep anymore…"

As Candy lapsed back into unconsciousness, Stan's mind raced. According to Ford, this had been where McGucket was being held, but the man was nowhere in sight. Either he'd been moved to a different area entirely, or that pained look on Ford's face must have meant something very different. For a moment, Stan briefly considered asking him what was going on, but after a while he realized it was pointless: until Ford got his vocal cords under control – or Stan learned how to understand Weirdspeak – only twenty percent of their conversations would make sense, and Ford would probably drive himself even crazier trying to make himself understood.

So, was McGucket dead, absent, or-

"Excuse me," said a familiar voice from somewhere overhead. "Do you have an appointment?"

Stan very slowly turned, as the monstrosity clinging to the factory ceiling slowly descended to the platform with a spine-jangling clatter of metal on metal and rumbled to a halt before them.

From the waist up, the thing was still recognizably McGucket: it had the same prematurely-aged features, the same bulging neurotic eyes, bulbous nose, bald scalp, long white beard complete with antique Band-Aid; there were even a few tattered bandages left around his right hand. It even wore his shirt, ragged and patched through it was. However, there were already signs that he'd changed: here and there, his skin was layered with patches of metal, his left arm threaded with tiny silvery veins; his entire arm was a gleaming metal prosthetic, at once a statuesque masterpiece of titanium muscles and piston-powered engines; tiny machine parts whirred and buzzed upon his shoulders, gears and cogs turning in a meaningless blur of activity. Most distinctive of the changes were to his eyes: not only were they now gleaming with silver blood vessels and aglow with LED pupils, but he also had six more of the damn things clustering his head, some of them dotting his forehead like steel pustules, others emerging from his cranium on flexible stalks.

From the waist _down,_ McGucket was a nightmare. At once part centipede and part lobster, McGucket's lower body looked as though someone had tried to make a centaur out of a locomotive: almost thirty feet long, his lower body stretched away in a hideous mass of synthetic flesh and glistening metal suspended on dozens upon dozens of multi-jointed legs; for good measure, it actually seemed to contract like an accordion in order to take up less space, compacting its body as it lowered itself onto the platform. And up near the seamless join between the torso and the tail, eleven additional arms wove through the air in complicated patterns, some organic, some mechanical, and some clearly holding weapons.

Stan looked from the McGucket thing to Ford, and realized that his brother was now staring at the floor, eyes shut tight. He'd often done that back when he was a kid, usually when he was about to cry and trying desperately not to show it. Whatever this thing here was, Ford had known on some level that they were going to meet it – and he'd been dreading it every step of the way, not because it posed a threat to either of them… but because it was still recognizably his old friend.

" **Toymaker,"** he whispered, opening his eyes at last. **"Ruinous Toymaker."**

"Pleased to meet you," said the McGucket-thing. "Don't think I got your name, though. The Henchmaniacs usually call ahead if there's special material to process, and you don't _look_ like material, but…" His eightfold eyes looked them up and down. "Did Bill send you?" he asked. "Does he want anything commissioned? I'm trying to keep up, I promise you, but there's only so much I can do up here. Or perhaps you're here to help me?"

It was the _voice_ that made the Toymaker all the more terrifying: McGucket wasn't shrieking and cackling like Bill, or snarling bestially like one of the Henchmaniacs, and in point of facts, he wasn't even his old demented self. If anything, he sounded quite calm, even serene. He still had the aged Appalachian drawl, but it was now combined with exquisite manners that the old Fiddleford McGucket had never demonstrated: no hamboning, no mad twitching – he hadn't even used any of his old hillbilly expletives. The _new_ McGucket was a man at peace with himself and the world at large…

…and Stan would have found the notion a lot more comforting if the guy hadn't found peace while turning people into Rust Thralls in a hellish factory in the middle of a post-apocalyptic reality breakdown.

" **I am Death,"** said Ford, with all the enthusiasm of a man following a script at gunpoint.

The Toymaker blinked in confusion. Then, his eyes widened. _"Oh,"_ he said. "Right, I understand! I thought I recognized your energies when you arrived. Bill told me you might be stopping by once you were ready, and I've got your finished order right here…"

He reached into a side-pocket of his massive lower body and plucked out a finely-made enamel box about the length of a trombone case. Opening it up for Ford's inspection, he revealed a number of easily-assembled parts, consisting of two connecting steel rods, a connecting pair of skeleton-shaped grips, and a long, curved blade.

"Your scythe, sir," he said proudly. "Forged and imbued with pure Weirdness, as per Bill's instructions. I hope you enjoy it."

Ford nodded as he accepted the disassembled scythe, looking all the more miserable for it, and casually slipped it into an inside pocket of his robe – where it promptly vanished without leaving so much as a bump in the fabric.

"… **and the other gifts of the Horsemen?"** he asked.

"Oh, of course, of course!"

One by one, more enamel boxes were produced, the contents of which Stan could only guess at, and all of them were gathered into the pockets of Ford's impossibly capacious cloak without seeming to weigh it down in any way, shape or form.

"Will that be all, sir?"

" **Do you know who I am?"**

"Of course I do, sir. You're Death, the last of the Horsemen."

" **No, I mean… who I really am. Don't you recognize my face? R'n Hgzmuliw Krmvh! Wznm rg, dsb rh rg vzhrvi gl xzoo nbhvou Wvzgs gszm hzb nb ldm mznv?!"**

The Toymaker smiled blankly. "I'm afraid not, sir."

At this point, after almost a full minute of watching Ford's heartbroken expression, Stan found that he simply couldn't hold his silence a minute longer. "What about her?" he asked, pointing down at Candy's unconscious form. "Tell me you at least remember her."

"Sorry, no. Was she one of the captives the Henchmaniacs were taking on tours of the workshop a month ago? You'll have to forgive me, all the new faces start to blur together after a while. But don't get me wrong, it's very nice to have a volunteer for once: it starts to get a little bit depressing to have your material screaming and begging for mercy all day, and believe me, it makes a nice change when one of them actually sits down on the table and asks to be remade. It feels..." The Toymaker's augmented brow wrinkled as he struggled with the effort of working out what to say next. "It feels good to… help? Yes, I think that's what I did. It felt good to help someone for a change."

Stan took a deep breath, valiantly fighting for a grip on the conversation. In that moment, he couldn't tell what was more frightening: the fact that McGucket could speak so casually about carving people up and turning them into Rust Thralls, or that he barely understood what the word "help" meant anymore. But Ford was still lost in his own misery, so Stan was forced to try again.

"You don't remember the Shacktron?" he plunged on. "Weirdmageddon? The laptop? All that Society of the Blind Eye junk? Those mechanical monsters you used to build? The portal?"

"I'm really sorry, sir; things tend to get blurry when I'm not working. Please don't take it personally."

"What about your name? Tell me you at least remember that."

"Of course," said McGucket pleasantly. "I'm the Ruinous Toymaker."

"No! No, no, no! I'm talking about who you used to be, before you ended up working here!"

The Toymaker cocked his head to one side in polite confusion, looking for all the world like a bewildered Jack Russel. "Before?" he echoed. "I'm afraid you're mistaken: I've always been working here, sir, have been ever since Bill Cipher created me. Never left the workshop except to check on the old machines downstairs."

" **But you** _ **weren't**_ **created by Bill Cipher!"** Ford exploded. **"You're not just one of his anti-reality constructs, you're a real person: you're Fiddleford McGucket!"**

That quizzical tilt of the head again. "Fiddleford McGucket?"

" **We went to college together! We were partners! Friends! Uli z grnv, R gslftsg dv xlfow yv hlnvgsrmt nliv!"**

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that last part? I'm afraid I didn't understand a word of it."

" **...yrros os m'I ,drofelddiF ,hO .sllaw eht ni srepsihw eht ot netsil ot tnaw t'ndid I tub ,uoy ot elbirret gnihtemos enod dah lliB taht llet dluoc I ?srats eht ni snrettap eht ees ton I dluoc yhw ,hO ?ti taht si - niaga evigrof reven dluoc uoy os tegrof uoy edam lliB os ,gnittegrof fo daetsni evagrof uoY ?tlusni lanif s'lliB siht sI!"** He was crying now, faintly luminous tears of pitch-black void-stuff coursing down his face and scorching through metal plating as they struck the ground.

"Are you alright, sir?"

"We tried to take down Bill together!" Stan chimed in. "We were all friends once! That's gotta spark something in there."

" **Banjo playing! Hambone! Spitoons! The Portal! The Society of the Blind Eye! Shifty! Dipper! Mabel! Your happy home atop the hill with all the rewards you were denied for so long! You must remember** _ **something!"**_

If anything, the Toymaker's expression only grew more bewildered. "I'm sorry, sirs, but I can't remember anything you're referring to."

At this, the two of them drew back a distance to rethink strategy – which admittedly wasn't easy, given that Ford was almost impossible to move when he was this upset; eventually, though, Stan was able to drag him away from the Toymaker and take him just out of earshot so they could talk.

"You think Bill's zapped him with the memory gun or something?" Stan whispered.

Ford shook his head, absently wiping anomalous tears from his eyes. **"Too lucid for that. Similar process, different method. Besides, Bill would never allow the memory gun to survive intact, not after what happened to him last time."**

 _Last_ _time?_ Stan wondered silently. "So what's happened to him?"

" **I can see metal in his brain, tiny pitchforks in his frontal lobes. Weirdness poured through certain segments, and all the parts that didn't seem interesting enough to keep were just boiled away. The Rust ate his memories and spat out the bones. Now, there's only empty hollows where new memory can grow. Bill wanted more than just a toy, he wanted a willing slave. Fiddleford doesn't know what he's doing is wrong; he doesn't even know what right and wrong is anymore: he just does what he's told. He wasn't even allowed to keep what little he remembered of his family; they took away his life and made him new, and then made him do the same for others. All because Bill hates him, because Fiddleford almost saved me from him… and because of what he helped do – or what he almost helped do – or what he helped do – or what he almost helped do-"**

" _Ford,"_ Stan hissed, hastily cutting through the reverie. "This is fascinating and all, but we've got more important things to think about right now: is there any way we can help this guy? I mean, can we fix whatever way Bill messed him up?"

For several seconds, the other half of the Grim Reaper Duo considered this. **"It might be possible to help him relearn the way of right and wrong, if we can heal his brain."**

"And how the hell are we supposed to do that?"

" **A healing power neither of us possess. Maybe Jheselbraum the Unswerving could undo the damage, but…"** Ford sighed. **"She is forbidden from entering this reality. And I probably don't deserve to call to her for aid, anyway,"** he added quietly.

"What about McGucket's memories? Is there anything we can do about that?"

" **We'd need tokens from his past: photo albums, home movies, journals, proof that his past life existed. It might not work perfectly, but it might be enough to spark something."**

" _Might?_ Sounds like a long shot to me."

" **It worked before. It worked for you."**

"Ford, what are you talking about?"

" **Mabel made it work, Mabel and Waddles. Then we all helped out.** _ **You remembered. You-"**_

"Ford, Ford, _Ford!_ You need to concentrate: we don't have any of this guy's old photo albums, and after everything that's happened to the world, do you think there's any chance we'll find them? They've probably gone the same way as your old journals by now. Is there any other way we can help him?"

Galaxies flickered and went dark inside Ford's eyes; stars sank away into endless night, even as others blazed into existence and instantly aged into ghastly white dwarfs. **"We could telepathically replicate the process: if we provide him with memories** _ **about**_ **him from as many people as possible – you, me, Dipper, Mabel, Tate – we may be able to rebuild just enough of his past to start an associative recall."**

"So why not start right now?"

" **I am Death."**

"Yeah, I heard you the first time, Ford; you're starting to sound like that talking tree I met back in 2006. Do you have anything remotely like telepathy in your new bag of tricks right now?"

" **Nothing remotely like it. My nearest equivalent would probably sear the inside of his brainpan barren."**

"Okay, so we're screwed until we can find a telepath. Alright then…" Stan took a deep breath, and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. "Do you think there's any way we can just knock him out and drag him onto the Stanmobile?"

" **We might be able to overpower him if we work together… but he might be able to sound the alarm before we subdue him. We are powerful, but even we cannot challenge Bill Cipher alone."**

"Is it just me, or are you getting the hang of speaking normally?"

" **Unfortunately not: blf'iv tvggrmt yvggvi zg** _ **fmwvihgzmwrmt**_ **nv, Hgzmovb. Zh blfi kldvi tildh, blfi nrmw xszmtvh lm z hfygov ovevo, zogvirmt gsv dzb blf kvixvrev ivzorgb: R'ev yvvm fhrmt Dvriwhkvzp drgs zonlhg vevib lgsvi hvmgvmxv zmw blf szevm'g vevm mlgrxvw."**

"Excuse me," the Toymaker interrupted. "I don't mean to intrude, but…" A secondary limb pointed in Stan's direction. "Who's he? I've checked the notes Bill gave me, and he never mentioned anything about Death having a twin."

 _Ooooh crap._

"And how did you hear all this stuff about Fiddleford McGucket?"

"… **er…"**

"…by accident, really…" said Stan, limply.

"You haven't been getting notes from this Mr A feller, have you?"

Ford's eyes lit up. **"You've received a note?"**

"A long time ago, yes. It was addressed to Fiddleford McGucket, and it told him to stay put until someone arrived to rescue him."

" **And that's why we're here! We're here to rescue you!"**

"That's very kind, I'm sure, but I know I'm not Fiddleford McGucket, so I'm afraid I don't need to be rescued."

" **But you** _ **are**_ **Fiddleford McGucket: Bill lied to you. You were alive long before this place existed, and you had a life before Bill sentenced you to this one. You had friends, you had family, you had a son. You had people who cared about you, and Bill took all that away from you."**

The Toymaker thought for a moment, clearly considering the matter. "Oh," he said at last.

If Ford was in any way surprised by this, he didn't show it, so once again Stan took up the slack in his stead. "Is that it?" he demanded. "Is that all you're gonna say? 'Oh?' Bill wiped your memories, played around with your brain, turned you into a monster, kept you down here as a slave, and that's all you can say about it? _Bill stole your life!_ How is this not registering with you?!"

The Toymaker shrugged. "I don't remember this old life of mine, so why should I care? How am I supposed to miss something I can't remember, and why would I want to know anything about it when I've got everything I need right here? Bill's given me everything I want: I can design, I can build, I can modify, and all I have to do in return is to process the new shipments of material. What more could I possibly want?"

"Oh, I don't know – maybe a different routine? Family? Friendship? Freedom? A chance at a life _outside_ the creepy factory infested with killer cyborgs?"

All eight of the Toymaker's eyes narrowed dubiously. "Is _that_ what other people want out of life?" he asked.

"Yes! Generally!"

"Really? Ah. Well, I've never known what any of those are like, so why would I want them?"

Stan groaned. "Oh good god almighty, _why_ are you making this so difficult? We're trying to help you, you know!"

"And I'm very thankful that you think I deserve it, but I'm really not interested in anything outside the workshop right now. I'm sorry to have wasted your time – believe me, it was a good offer, but it just doesn't appeal to me. Maybe I'll reconsider it in a couple of days, and I'll be able to learn all about what it's like to have family and friends, but for now I've got work to do: I have quotas to fill, and the Henchmaniacs don't like it when I lag behind."

"Now _listen,_ you centipede-legged old fart _,"_ Stan snarled, **"Dv'ev gizevoovw z olmt dzb qfhg gl urmw blf, zmw nb yilgsvi rh mlg tlrmt gl trev fk lm blf mld; R hdvzi, ru blf yivzp srh svzig mld, R'n mlg tlmmz ivhg fmgro R urmw dszgvevi kzhhvh uli blfi zhhslov zmw izn blfi svzw fk rg! Xlnkivmwv?"**

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I didn't understand a word of it, sir."

Stan took a deep breath as he once again struggled to regain control of his voicebox. Whatever energies had transformed him and Ford into the Grim Reaper Duo, it wasn't done twisting them out of shape.

" **Don't you want freedom?"** Ford asked quietly. **"Isn't there something here that you don't have?"**

"Nope. Sorry."

" **But you said the Henchmaniacs don't like it when you lag behind. You have side-projects you want to perform, and work for Bill distracts from that, yes? Sometimes you want to build something and Bill won't let you even try, yes?"**

"True, but that's just life. We don't always get what we want, and if we want to get what we need, we have to labour under a few restrictions from time to time."

" **But Bill doesn't. He made a world where he makes all the rules and made sure that none of them apply to him. Don't you want a chance to see what it's like to live outside of his laws? Don't you want to create something Bill doesn't want you to build?"**

"I can't. I know I can't…" But for the first time, uncertainty registered in the Toymaker's numerous eyes. "They all said I can't. I can't… can I?"

" **You can be free if you wish, Fiddleford. All you have to do is take the chance: come with us, and be the man you** _ **want**_ **to be, not the man Bill designed you to be."**

At this, the Toymaker turned and stared at Ford with a look that hovered somewhere between confusion and something almost like recognition. "Who _are_ you?" he whispered. "You're not just Death, you're… something different. Something… more?"

Ford took a deep breath, his face contorting with the effort of speaking in comprehensible language. **"My name is Stanford Filbrick Pines,"** he said solemnly.

"I… I don't recognize that name, but I feel like I _should_. Why?"

" **Once, before Weirdmageddon went global, I was your friend… and if you'd permit it, I'd like to be your friend again."**

There was a long and distinctly thoughtful pause.

"Supposing," said the Toymaker, "Just for the sake of argument, that I accepted your proposition: if I went with you, would I be allowed to go on building? You'd let me create whatever I want – no restrictions on designs?"

" **Of course."**

"As long as you don't hurt anybody," Stan added helpfully.

" **Only volunteer material from now on."**

Fiddleford's metal-plated face wrinkled in confusion. "Is it really so important? Material is material, regardless of its opinion. That's what Bill told me, anyway," he added sheepishly.

" **If you want to work on your own designs, you'll have to do so without unwilling flesh."**

"And you've also got to bring Candy here with us when we leave," Stan chimed in. "And whatever Bill did to make her start volunteering for all this crap, you're going to talk her out of it: from now on, no kids either."

Once again, there was silence, except for the faint clatter of the Toymaker's metal feet absently drumming against the floor with a sound like hail on a tin roof. For perhaps a minute, he pondered the matter, all eight of his eyes swinging back and forth between Stan, Ford, and the unconscious figure on the table.

"Alright," he said at last. "I'll go with you. There's just one problem."

"And what's that?"

"How am I supposed to get out of here?"

"…you can't just walk out the door?"

The Toymaker shook his head sadly. "Bill put an alarm on the inner perimeter: if I attempt to leave my position in the upper chambers or if anyone attempts to remove me from the workshop, an alarm will sound. Bill will be here in 8.5 seconds – at the most conservative estimates – and he'll be tearing the Manufactory apart long before we can escape."

" **What if we were to bring the chariot up here, instead?"** Ford suggested. **"We can open a portal to the outside world without ever having to trigger the alarm."**

"Unfortunately, Bill thought of that, too. Back when I was just getting started, he had me implanted with multiple tracking chips to prevent anyone from stealing me; apparently, the Henchmaniacs aren't all that good at keeping their hands to themselves."

"And we can't just cut the chips out of you, right?" Stan asked wearily.

"Not without a signal scrambler of some kind, and all the resources that we could use to build _that_ have been used up on the last couple of shipments."

"Then what if we steal them instead? You could say there needs to be a product recall or something, and the moment the shipment arrives, we steal the scramblers, cut the chip out of you and hightail it outta here?"

"I'm a Toymaker, not a Henchmaniac: I don't get to make requests of anyone."

" **Plus, we can't afford to stay here forever. Bill's sure to stop by sooner or later, assuming he doesn't just send in some Henchmaniacs to check on this place."**

Stan opened his mouth to offer a smart-assed reply – and in that moment, a bolt of inspiration rippled down from the pitch-black rafters and nailed him squarely between the eyeballs. Immediately, a faintly ridiculous-looking smile began making its way across his face, and didn't stop until it had formed an almost painful grin.

"But what if we could?" he asked.

There was a pause, as ten very confused eyes turned in his direction.

"What if we really _could_ stay here forever? What if we didn't have to break him out of the Forge at all? I mean, it's like mom used to say:If you can't get the turtle out of its shell, take the shell with you!"

" **You mean-"**

"We steal the entire Forge, lock, stock, barrel and robots! Between the three of us, we've got more power than we know what to do with: me and Ford, we've got all the powers of Death split between us, and you've got all this cyborg magical stuff going on – there's got to be _something_ we can use to get this hunk of junk moving. I mean, it's not like we haven't done this before: back when we first took the fight to Bill, you put an entire building on legs, McGucket!"

"I did?" The Toymaker hesitated, then shook his head. "But this isn't just a building: it's an entire pocket reality, an entire world unto itself! Bill's anchored everything in place, and you can't hope to move it unless you've got some means of cutting through chains of pure will."

" **But we do,"** said Ford, and for the first time since they'd arrived in this miserable place, he was smiling. **"You've just given it to us: the gifts of the Horsemen can be turned against that which created them."**

And as he spoke, the first of the enamel boxes was slowly floating out of his robes, opening itself to reveal the components lurking inside; seemingly of its own accord, each part began to slowly drift out of the box and assemble itself in mid-air. Intact, the weapon looked far more impressive: a length of glistening black iron with grips shaped like tiny human skeletons, surmounted by a wickedly-curved blade carved with dozens of tiny screaming faces all across the flat, it was truly a terror to behold. As Stan watched, it seemed to drink the light around it, absorbing every last drop of illumination until all that remained was a rippling halo of shadows, an aura of purest darkness.

" **Death's Scythe,"** said Ford, reverently. **"The Reaper of Hope. Bill wanted something very special when he commissioned this from you, Fiddleford: he'd seen the psychopomps of other realities, and he wanted something that could match their prowess. He asked for a weapon delicate enough to sever the link between body and soul, but strong enough to snuff out a star… and sharp enough to carve through** _ **thought."**_

"You mean-"

 **"Yes. If this can't cut the anchor binding this realm in place, nothing can. I can sever those ties and reconnect them to the Stanmobile; with Stanley piloting it while I make sure the bindings come undone, we can take the Forge anywhere we please."**

Fiddleford blinked. Then, his face lit up in excitement. "I'm not sure if I understood everything you just said, but that… actually might work. But how soon can we go?"

" **There's no time like the present, is there? All we have to do is make sure this pocket reality is secured for motion, and then we can begin!"**

Ford turned to Stan, the smile on his face now bright enough to outshine the cosmos, and enveloped him in a bone-crumpling hug. **"You are a genius, Stanley,"** he exclaimed jubilantly. **"You. Are. A.** _ **Genius!"**_

"But where are we going? Where are we supposed to take this place once we've got it moving?"

" **To the rest of the Zodiac, of course. They can benefit more from it that Bill ever could. But enough of that. We've got a forge to steal! Come on, Stanley: it's time for the biggest heist in all infinity!"**

* * *

A/N: Up next - recovery, hope, and game-changers!

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	34. Shattered Hourglass

A/N: Aaaand I'm back! Don't mind the bang, ladies and gents, that was just the sound of my head exploding.

Suffice to say, it's been hot as hell in my neck of the woods, and I've been dealing with work, family functions, dehydration _and_ headaches, so the story's arrived a little later than usual. I can only apologise for the delay, and try to clamber back to some awkward semblance of a schedule. In the meantime, a hearty thank-you to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourite and followed!

For those of you concerned about the tone, I've done my best to keep up the habit of gradually improving the heroes' lot in life despite obstacles continuously flung in the path, and in this chapter, I the binding of wounds begins. Be warned though, this will require catharsis and ventilation of harmful emotions before the healing can begin - just a disclaimer.

Without any further ado, the latest chapter! Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is still not mine, shock of all shocks.

Also, I may one day write a happy, fun, upbeat story with only the barest minimum of crushing despair. Stop laughing.

* * *

"How long has he been asleep?"

"About fifteen hours by my watch."

"Your watch still works? Mine's all over the place: it can't make up its mind on whether it's been an hour or five minutes."

"Time's still acting up around me, I guess."

"And he hasn't budged since then? Nobody's been able to wake him up?"

"Nope. Good news is, he's stopped transforming in his sleep, so the doc's finally been able to take a look at him. By the sounds of things, everything's normal… well, as normal as it can be when you're a thirty-year-old shapeshifter who also happens to be a thirteen-year-old kid. There's nothing wrong with him, health-wise: he just needs sleep."

"What about you?"

"What _about_ me?"

"Mabel, you haven't moved from this spot since we first put him to bed and you haven't eaten anything in all that time. By the looks of things, _you_ haven't slept either. I mean, have you _seen_ those rings around your eyes?"

"Of course I haven't slept; I need to be here when Dipper wakes up-"

"And do what? You need your sleep, too, in case you hadn't noticed: you need solid food and fresh water, and you've spent the last few hours drinking nothing but this… this weird pink stuff with plastic dinosaurs and novelty icecubes floating around in it-"

"It's called Mabel Juice."

"Whatever! You need to look after yourself as well, you know."

"I'm _fine_ , Pacifica. Jeez, you don't have to keep babysitting us now that we're back in civilization."

"Who's babysitting? I'm just trying to make sure we all get through this in one piece. We've lost enough of ourselves already, remember?"

Mabel smiled wearily, and absently glanced back down at the battered watch on her wrist, still not entirely believing that it had been fifteen hours since she'd been reunited with Dipper. Right here and now, it barely felt like fifteen _minutes._

But then, time passed surprisingly quickly at the Rallying Flag, particularly in the wake of a narrowly-averted crisis.

No sooner had Dipper lapsed into unconsciousness, people had started hammering on doors: Wendy's Society of the Enduring had been locked outside during all the confusion, whilst the refugees that Gideon had sent to the hotel had all been sealed upstairs for the last couple of hours, and now everyone wanted in again.

Immediately, the hotel foyer had dissolved into complete confusion as Wendy and Pacifica had begun chiselling their way through the resin and webbing the Shapeshifter had used to seal the doors shut. Within minutes, the lobby was crowded with new faces, from the downtrodden vagrants of Gideon's entourage to the mutants and monsters of Wendy's army.

For her part, Mabel had ignored it: all that that mattered had been getting Dipper away from all the staring eyes and suspicious glares fixed on him, away from the whisperers, rumourmongers and all the other things he'd shouldn't have to deal with when he finally awoke. So, as soon as the doors to the bedrooms were clear, she simply carried Dipper away with Waddles in hot pursuit and Pacifica clearing a path through the crowds, sending doors flying open with a wave of her hand before Mabel had to reach for the handle.

It didn't take them long to realize that the interior of the hotel seemed to take up a lot more space than the outside, so if nothing else, there was no shortage of rooms. So, while Wendy had grimly billeted her underlings along the first floor and the refugees nervously angled for literally anywhere else, Mabel went about hunting for a place that would suit Dipper best: remembering everything he'd said back in the lobby, she eventually tracked down one of the more spacious rooms in the building, big enough to keep him from suffering any claustrophobia and equipped with enough blankets and quilts to keep out the cold.

Then, with Pacifica drawing the covers back and telekinetically plumping the pillows, Mabel had helped Dipper into bed, plucked off his shoes, drew the covers up to his chin and let him rest at long last.

And then the waiting game had begun in earnest: Mabel had found herself a large armchair lurking in a corner of the bedroom and sat down to wait, while Pacifica had reluctantly hovered away to check on the other guests.

Since then, the clamour from downstairs had finally subsided as the new arrivals gradually settled in; even the persistent angry snarls from the Society of the Enduring had gradually died away, replaced with the occasional murmur of conversation from the neighbouring rooms, courtesy of the refugee doctor making his rounds.

"How's everyone else doing?" Mabel asked quietly.

Pacifica hesitated. "It's a bit mixed," she said at last. "Mom and Preston are both asleep, the refugees are a lot calmer now that Gideon's giving orders again and Amanda's receiving medical attention, but the Society… well, they're waiting for Wendy to explain what's going on, and right now, she's not up to explaining _anything_."

"Why's that?"

"Probably because she just had the biggest rug on the planet yanked out from under her. Think about it. All this time, she's been thinking that Dipper was killed by the Shapeshifter and that Bill's guaranteed to win no matter what we do. Now she's just found out that everything she believed in was wrong: not only is Dipper still alive, but he was actually the Shapeshifter all along, and now there's a chance Bill might not be unstoppable after all. Wouldn't you be lost?"

Mabel eyed Pacifica strangely. "Since when did you get so good at analysing people? A few months ago, you could barely get through a conversation without-"

"-getting even more snobbish than usual?"

"I was gonna say 'threatening to sue someone,' but sure, let's go with that. I mean, you didn't even know what sharing was a few months ago, and now you're everyone's shoulder to cry on. What's up with that?"

Once again, Pacifica hesitated, and a look of pain crossed her porcelain features. "When I was still playing Bill's game… well, you've seen enough of the prisons to know that's not easy for anyone in there. After what I saw back there, after what Bill made me do… after what I almost _chose_ to do… well, I really don't want to even think about losing anyone else."

 _And that's why you've been everyone's babysitter for the last few weeks?_ Mabel thought – but of course, she didn't say it out loud.

"So… I think it's about time you started taking care of yourself, Mabel. Even Waddles is asleep by now; maybe you should follow his lead."

"But-

"Please, Mabel. You've been awake for almost two days straight, and you're still coming down from a fight _and_ one of the biggest shocks of your life. You need sleep just as much as Dipper. So just rest your eyes and have a nap for a while, okay? Dipper will still be here when you wake up."

As she spoke, the door opened, revealing a blanket and a pillow hovering in midair. With a wave of her hand, Pacifica draped the blanket over Mabel and tucked the pillow behind her back, even reclining her chair for good measure. Mabel was already opening her mouth to object, but the expression on the little doll's face beggared all resistance. Whatever had happened to Pacifica to give her all this newfound concern and determination, it hadn't gone for half-measures, if that look of bullish obstinacy on her face was any evidence.

"Just get some sleep," Pacifica whispered gently. As an afterthought, she added, "Or I'll sue you for every last dime you've got."

Mabel blinked. "Was that a _joke?"_

"Um… kind of. I've been auditioning it for future conversations, but my delivery's still pretty wide of the mark."

"Well, at least you're trying, that's the main thing. Aren't you going to get some sleep as well?"

Pacifica shook her head sadly. "I don't really need to anymore. I'm still not sure if that's good or bad… but that's another issue for another day. You just lay back and close your eyes: I'll make sure this place is still running when you and Dipper wake up…"

* * *

Some distance away from the Hotel, a huge warehouse sat baking under the black sun; here, under the watchful eyes of armed guards, the ruling gangs had hidden a cache of drinking water – far from the only one in the city, but definitely the biggest. Pallets of mineral water stood in towering rows like the skyscrapers of some bizarre bottle metropolis; water purification tablets sat in readiness, just waiting to be sold only the highest bidders; and of course, for those lucky enough to have access to indoor plumbing, the huge tanks of water were always present and always safe.

Until now.

At the heart of the warehouse, a huge metal vat stood amidst the tanks, a relic of the days when this had once been a brewery; most of the time, it remained empty except on the rare days that the desert prospectors found more water than the warehouse's tanks could hold. Had anyone been watching this gargantuan tub, they would have seen a normally inactive pipeline suddenly discharge a thick gout of black slime into the depths of the vat.

But for once, nobody was there to see: most of the guards were dead, gouged eyes and slit wrists to a man; an unlucky few remained alive, staring up at the sky and burbling nonsensically as their sanity dribbled away.

Bit by bit, the stream of Filth pouring into the vat thickened and grew, forming a lake of midnight-black ooze that gradually filled the tub entirely, a colossal mass off roiling, bubbling, tentacle-studded slime. Then, from the cloying depths, a form emerged, shaped from the liquid Filth itself – barely-solid and rudimentary at best, but still recognizably humanoid. And into this crude, oozing shape, the Black Signal poured its roaming intelligence.

There was an awkward pause, as the Filth-construct regarded the figure standing on the gantry opposite him with interest.

" **Hiya, Gnarly,"** said John, pleasantly. **"How's tricks?"**

Nyarlathotep's eyebrows rose in amusement. "You're very well-informed, considering the limitations of your vision."

" **Oh, I work best with tech, and thanks to the Toymaker, there is a lot of tech out there I can piggyback on. Lots of eyes to watch the fun with. But you wanted to talk with me…"**

"Well, John, I'm very curious to know why you've been sniffing around the members of the Zodiac."

" **Oh please. It's not as if the Zodiac's even a thing any more, is it? Bill changed the rules. He flipped the chessboard. Knocked old constraints upside down and turned them inside out. The physics that would have allowed the Wheel to turn are just so much old news and dead history."**

"John…"

" **You and your friend with the Salamander in his brain, you're not gathering the Zodiac to form the Wheel. The two of you are gathering an army."**

John snickered malignantly, and added, **"Well,** _ **he**_ **is. You've got your own little agenda up your sleeve, am I right? You want something from him, a little extra time on the clock for your** _ **magnum opus**_ **, I'm betting. Tick-tock goes the clock, and every day your hourglass is a little emptier."**

"Try to stick to the point, John. Why have you been so interested in Dipper?"

" **Because he's like me."**

"Oh _really?_ I must have missed the point in Dipper's history when _he_ became a suicide bomber at the behest of some manipulative piece of ass."

" **Missing the point, Gnarly. The Shapeshifter and I… we both started out as something different. We were both outsiders, always picked last, always trying to be noticed. We both had special ladies in our life, girls we would have done anything for; for them, we would have unmade whole worlds and killed the stars themselves-themselves-themselves. Now, we're more than just outsiders. He's a nightmare made flesh; I am flesh made nightmare. I think we'd be good friends."**

At this, Nyarlathotep just rolled his eyes.

"You really are a child, you know that? I've met a few cosmic abominations that couldn't act their age, but for Azathoth's sake, you were in your _twenties_ when you became the Black Signal, and you're behaving like a pre-schooler pretending to be the big man in the sandpit. If it's not the endless quest for friendship, it's the showing off, and if it's not that, it's the kid-with-a-magnifying-glass sadism. And then there's the quirks, the pranks, the electronic toy hoarding habit, the endless trolling…"

" **You're giving** _ **me**_ **shit about trolling? Pot-kettle, Gnarly, pot-kettle. We're more alike than you think."**

"Please. If you want to look for similarities, take a gander at Bill."

" **Hmm. Perhaps. Do you think Bill might accept a handshake from the whale-mollusc gods if he realized just how much better it would be in the long-run?"**

"That can wait until later."

" **Ooh, ominous."**

"For now, I want you to leave Dipper alone. This is a pivotal time for him and the other members of the Zodiac, one that can ill afford interruptions. Cipheropolis is a crucible, John, and what will emerge from it will depend entirely on how the catalysts react. Oh, and it goes without saying that your habit of driving people to despair, madness and suicide will not be tolerated when it comes to the rest of the Zodiac. Do I make myself clear?"

" **And what makes you think I have to play by your rules, old man?"**

Nyarlathotep smirked. "A little something I like to call 'do as you're told or you'll find yourself sealed in a room with Lilith.' How does that strike your black little heart?"

There was a deathly pause.

Inside the vat, the Filth slowly began to froth.

" **Lilith is gone,"** John hissed. **"Lilith is dead. Lilith is WORSE-than-dead. Lilith is with the Nephilim and won't be coming back any time soon! I made sure of it."**

"The multiverse is vast and full of horrors, Johnny-boy. Your monster under the bed is alive and free in a billion other worlds, and every one of those Liliths remembers your assassination attempt. I could be wrong, but I doubt that they'd care much about little things like dimensional iterations: one John is as good as any other when it comes to vengeance."

" **You wouldn't. You** _ **couldn't.**_ **"**

"Oh really? Keep pushing, then. See where it gets you, Little Dream."

There was another, slightly longer pause.

" **What do you want from me?"**

"As I said, I want you to be on your best behaviour, young man. But I also want a word with your… friends. The Dreamers. The Whale-Mollusc Gods. The Sun-Eaters. Whatever you want to call them, I'd like a nice long chat with those who sleep within the Dreaming Prison. I have a proposition that I think will interest them – an offer of alliance."

" **What makes you think they'll listen?"**

"Because I know that the best path free of their prison is _sideways_. Tell them that, and you and I can like each other simply for who we are."

He thought for a moment. "Oh, and one more thing: I'm going to need you for something a little bit more specific in the meantime. See, I'm putting a team together; you might be the second-last of them, but you will be playing an important part…"

* * *

"Mabel… Mabel! MABEL! MABELLLLL!"

Mabel was already halfway out of her chair before she had time to realize she was conscious. Belatedly remembering where she was and what she was doing there, she glanced around her, trying to figure out what emergency had just awoken her. She couldn't hear any sounds of fighting, she couldn't smell smoke or noxious chemicals, and though it looked to be about midnight by now, she couldn't see anyone attacking the hotel. However, from the sounds of things, someone was in the room with her – and moving a quite an impressive speed, too.

Then, she recognized Dipper's voice, calling her name in blind panic. Suddenly wide awake, she fumbled blindly for the nightlight to her left and hastily switched it on, bathing the pitch-black room in just enough light to see the shadows by.

A moment later, something small and terrified slammed into her at high speed, toppling the nightlight on its side and almost knocking her chair to the ground. Of course, Mabel didn't need to look too closely at the figure to realize that it was, of course, her brother.

"Dipper, what-"

" _I thought I was him again!"_ he screamed, voice on the edge of hysteria. "I thought for sure I was gonna be him when I woke up! And when I opened my eyes it was dark and cold and I couldn't find the light and I thought I was trapped underground and that I was going to be there forever and thought I really was the Shapeshifter and I was never anything different and I'd never see you or Wend or Soos ever again and I'd be all alone and and and and-"

But already his voice was dissolving into panicked sobs, until at last, he was only crying. Even in the dark, she could already tell that he was giving full vent to his fear and loneliness. After all, he'd always done his best to hide his tears in public, or at least to hold them back until he was alone and well out of sight – particularly if he thought he might be mocked for "being a crybaby" or worse. If he was crying now, he was too far gone to care about little things like self-respect, and was just bawling his eyes out.

Mabel hugged him tightly around the shoulders. "It's okay, Dipper," she soothed. "It's _okay_. You had a bad dream, that's all. Just take a deep breath, and everything will be fine."

Several seconds went by, as Dipper continued sobbing into Mabel's shoulder. "But what if I… what if I forget again?" he whimpered at last. "What if the next time I close my eyes, I stop being Dipper and start being Shifty again? What if Bill tries to take me back again, or what I hurt you or-"

"You _won't._ Because even if you do turn into the Shapeshifter again, I brought you back once; I can do it again. And even if Bill does show up looking for you, you're safe: we've got a hotel full of weird mutants and people with weird-looking guns to help out. Wendy's turned into a super-strong barbarian hero, I can control time, and Pacifica can juggle tree trunks with her mind – she actually _killed_ a Henchmaniac a few weeks ago. Even Gideon's got some actual psychic powers now. And you know what? Now that we _know_ Bill isn't unstoppable, if he did show his face around here, I'm betting we could have him on the run in about three minutes flat."

 _And the weirdest thing is, I can almost believe it now that I've got Dipper back._

"You really think so?" Dipper asked.

"Absolutely. So, you just take a deep breath and have a rest. Everything's going to be okay."

It took several minutes, but eventually, the trembling figure in her arms stilled and relaxed, his pattering heartrate gradually returning to normal. Before long, he'd stopped crying and his breathing had steadied at last apart from the odd sniffle.

 _Is it just me, or does he seem_ smaller _than usual? I can't get a good look at him, but I swear he hasn't been this light in years. And maybe it's just my imagination, but I swear his voice sounds like it's gone up a couple of octaves…._

"I'm sorry," said Dipper at last, voice still shaking ever-so-slightly. "I shouldn't have woken you up-"

"Dipper, you've been someone else for the last thirty years, and you spent most of it underground or frozen. I don't think anyone's blaming you for having a few nightmares."

"But still… I shouldn't have leaped out of bed and gone running around the room like that. I mean, screaming and flinging myself at you and crying with my nose leaking all over the place… I was acting like a little kid."

Reaching over Dipper's shoulder, Mabel set the fallen nightlight back on its stand. Then, as the light returned to the room, she finally got a good look at her brother's current form, and very hastily covered her mouth to hide her smile.

"Um, Dipper…"

Dipper looked down at himself, and realized that at some point in all the confusion, he'd accidentally transformed into his five-year-old self – right down to the pyjamas he'd have been wearing at this time of night.

"Oh right," he muttered.

A moment of concentration later, Dipper was thirteen and back in his everyday clothes again, except this time he was trying to hide the garnet-coloured blush spreading across his cheeks.

"Guess I should be glad I didn't end up wearing the lamb costume," he said. "Or _being_ Bill's Lamby-Lamb. Urgh, if there was one thing I didn't want to remember, it was that. Worst birthday party ever…"

Mabel opened her mouth to ask what he meant, then quickly realized that Dipper could probably do without having the worst moments of the last few months cross-examined, and hastily closed her mouth. Unfortunately, that left the two of them sitting in the half-light with nothing to do or say, even though both of them clearly had a thousand things left to discuss; so, after about a minute of awkward silence, Mabel made a grab for the least innocuous topic on hand.

"What's it like to shapeshift?" she asked quietly.

"It… it's not easy to describe. See, because I used to be the Shifty…" Dipper shook his head. "Because I'm _also_ Shifty – lord, this is confusing. Look, I'm of two minds on the subject: to Shifty, it was the most natural thing in the world; it was the sort of thing you could do without even thinking, like walking or eating. I… _he_ was happy when he became something new, when he could try out all the new limbs or wings or whatever, but he never really thought about what it was like to _change._ He wouldn't know how to detail it _._ I mean, can you describe what breathing feels like when you've done it your whole life without having any problems?"

"Then how do _you_ feel about it? Just you."

Dipper thought for a moment, idly chewing his lip as he struggled with the effort of putting the unknown into words. "Imagine you could change sweaters just by thinking about it," he began. "Imagine you could make a wish and be wearing a completely different set of clothes, just like that… but the clothes are a part of you now. Because you're not changing clothes: you're changing your skin and bones and organs, turning yourself inside out, smooshing yourself down or stretching yourself out, until there's new you facing the world. And that's just the way I feel about it emotionally. How it _physically_ feels is…"

He sighed deeply. "At first, it hurt. Bill wanted it to hurt: he wanted me to feel every bone in my body breaking and distending and shrinking in all directions. But after I got used to it, the whole thing just stopped hurting. By the time I was with Wendy, I could almost transform on my own. And now that I'm _me_ again… I think I like it."

By way of demonstration, he changed again, shifting rapidly from form to form: human, armadillo, seat cushion, gnome, python, and at least a dozen other shapes. For a split second, he was Shifty. And a moment later, he was Dipper again.

"Besides," he added. "I have to shapeshift every now and again, otherwise things start getting uncomfortable. It's not lethal and it doesn't damage my powers or anything like that, but… sooner or later, I have to become the Shapeshifter again if I want the itching to go away."

"Why?"

"Because it's my true form," said Dipper.

His expression didn't change at all and his voice barely rose above a whisper, but Mabel could tell at once just how miserable her brother really was when he said those five little words. Even with the room still thick with shadows, she could see the depression in his eyes.

"What about your memory?" she said, hastily changing the subject – if only so they could find something to talk about that didn't make Dipper feel terrible. "Have you really remembered everything about yourself?"

"Everything… including what happened after Weirdmageddon."

 _No, no, no! We're supposed to be talking about things that won't make Dipper miserable! Change the subject again! Abort conversation! Mayday, mayday!_

"I remember everything from both my lifetimes now. It's still a bit difficult to get my head around, but I think I've almost gotten used to being thirty and thirteen at the same time. But… it's still hard."

"What do you mean?"

"Remembering my life as Dipper. There's so many embarrassing things I'd rather have forgotten, all those stupid mistakes and bad ideas… and worse. I was such a horrible person back then."

" _What?"_

"I was a horrible person," said Dipper flatly. "Shifty was a monster and I'm glad I'm not him anymore, but Dipper was a hateful little brat. You know it, I know it, so let's just move on."

"No!" Mabel exploded. "No, no, and no! We are not moving on from this! What could have possibly given you the idea that you were a horrible person?! Dipper, you've helped save the day so many times it's not funny: you rescued me from the gnomes, you saved us all from those ghosts at the Dusk 2 Dawn, you led the fight against Bill the first time around, _and_ you brought down a giant robot with your bare hands! That's just the stuff you did in the first half of the summer! And what about everything you did for me this year alone? You helped me say no to Gideon, you gave up a chance to be with Wendy just to let me keep Waddles, and you helped me rescue Mermando! I haven't even gone into all the things you've done for all the people in Gravity Falls-"

"Blips on the radar," Dipper scoffed. "None of that adds up to much in the long run, Mabel, especially when I spent my entire life being stupid, selfish and wrong about everything. All that stuff about helping you keep Waddles? The first time around, I didn't care until I ended up accidentally guilt-tripping myself. I mean, you heard what I said back in the lobby, back when I was still being Shifty full-time: every other day of my life was another stupid mistake. When I wasn't hurting someone's feelings, I was screwing up everything without even realizing it, and when I wasn't doing that, I was being _wrong!_ I was wrong about the gnomes, wrong about making a deal with Bill, wrong about Stan, wrong about the portal, wrong about keeping secrets from you, wrong wrong wrong wrong _wrong!"_

He took a deep breath to steady himself. "Frankly, Mabel, I don't know why you're pretending that I was anything other than a waste of skin."

"Oh, I don't know, maybe it's because you're not thinking straight? Or maybe it's just because I don't know why you've started hating yourself! What brought this on, Dipper? Why are you thinking like this?"

For the second time in as many minutes, Dipper bit his lip. "I've never really been… well, you know all about me and my self-esteem: it's been all over the map this summer. Every time I get a little bit of confidence, reality smacks me in the back of the head and reminds me who I really am. Back when we declared war on Bill just before Weirdmageddon went global, I got too big for my britches – as Gideon would probably put it; I got overconfident and stupid-"

"No you didn't! Everything would have been fine if the Wheel hadn't gone wrong!"

"Doesn't change the fact that I was too full of it to be scared. And because of that, Bill took me down a peg. You've read my journal, so you don't need the whole story but… well… towards the end was the worst…" He swallowed; by now, a thin glaze of sweat had coated his brow, and his shaking hands were already gripping the armrests of the chair like claws.

"We don't need to talk about this if you don't want to," said Mabel hastily.

"But I do. See, Bill made me into the Shapeshifter, made it so that I always had been. But that wasn't all he did: he wanted to make sure that I could still be tortured even if I didn't really exist anymore. So, he left a tiny bit of my mind inside Shifty's brain, "like a barnacle," so while I was being the Shapeshifter, I was also being Dipper but couldn't realize it: that tiny piece of me had all my old memories and thoughts, but it couldn't knowingly access them, and it couldn't even think for itself… but it knew that something was wrong. So, while most of me was out happily killing people and plotting revenge as Shifty, the other part of me was screaming for help and didn't even know why. Like a car alarm in the middle of the night, it just kept ringing and ringing and ringing…

"And that's why Shifty hated Dipper so much: because that tiny little piece of me could unconsciously remember what I'd been like, and he didn't know how to shut it up. And because it had nothing else to do but look out at the world and scream, that little bit of me had a lot of time to spend on memory lane without even realizing it. Every mistake I'd made, every time I'd hurt someone's feelings, every time I'd ruined something important, every embarrassing slip of the tongue, every time my voice cracked, every time I couldn't stand to look at myself in the mirror…" He blinked rapidly, eyes suddenly shining with tears. "…and how much I've hurt you over the years, and I just want you to know _I am so, so sorry…"_

"Dipper, you need to think about this for a minute – we've both made horrible mistakes and we've both wanted to be punished for them. I had Weirdmageddon on my conscience, and you've got… all this stuff. But that's not the point right now. The point is-"

"I don't have to be that person anymore, Mabel!" Dipper finished, ever so-slightly manic. "I don't have to be selfish or stupid – I don't even have to be Dipper anymore if you don't want me to be! Tell me, what's the first thing that pops into your head? I can be that."

He executed another quick shapeshift, warping wildly from one form to another – some of them familiar faces from around Gravity Falls, others complete strangers.

"I can be anyone you want me to be!" he exclaimed, a note of desperation in his voice. "I can be your friend, I can be your servant, I can be your bodyguard, I can even be Waddles 2.0 if you want me to be! You name it, I can be it: just say the word, and I can stop being Dipper _and be anything else!"_

"Dipper, _stop it."_

Instantly, he stopped in mid-transformation, multiple faces instantly frozen in mutually stunned expressions.

"I don't want you to be anyone else," said Mabel. "And I definitely don't want you to hate yourself, because that's the way Bill would have wanted you. I know, because that's how he made me feel back in my prison. Every day I didn't toe the line, he made me hate myself, and now he's got the same thing going for you: now that you're not Shifty the attack dog, you're hating yourself. And I don't want you to be whoever Bill made you to be. I don't want you to hate yourself, and I don't want you to keep punishing yourself for all the old mistakes. Like I said, I don't care if you're Dipper or Shifty: you will always be my brother, no matter what happens… but I want you to be happy on your terms – _your_ terms, not Bill's terms."

If anything, the look on Dipper's face looked even more miserable. "I don't know how," he said quietly.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I can't focus on the things I used to do for fun anymore. I can remember them, but I can't single them out in my memories: whenever I'm not thinking like Shifty, I'm thinking about how much I… well, you get the picture."

Mabel sighed grimly. "Well, that's settled then: tomorrow morning, we're going down to the markets and we're not gonna rest until we find a working TV and a _Ghost Harassers_ DVD. Then, we're going to find every single conspiracy book in the marketplace and buy 'em all, just for you! We're not gonna stop until you can remember how to have fun, bro-bro!"

"I'd… I'd like that."

Then, after perhaps a moment or two of silent musing, he added "Maybe you could pick up some knitting needles and wool as well, right?"

It took a little while for Mabel to realize what Dipper had meant: after all the time in Mabeland she'd spent being punished for her attempts at art projects, she'd almost forgotten what it was like to create just for the fun of it. In fact, every time she tried to recall the thrill of building and knitting and sculpting and drawing, all she could think of were the times she'd been punished for breaking the rules: the void, the hellish visions of her future, the box of puppets and the nightmare encounter with the illusory Stan, Ford and Dipper. And lurking behind every recollection she experienced was the same terrible thought: _you deserve to suffer; you caused Weirdmageddon._ And it only kept repeating itself, echoing through her brain every time she tried to think of it.

 _How am I supposed to help Dipper when I can't even help myself?_ Mabel wondered despairingly. But of course, she couldn't say it out loud. She had to stay strong for Dipper's sake.

Instead, she replied, "I'd like that."

 _You know what? Screw it. I might not know how to have fun anymore, and Dipper might not know how to have fun anymore, but I'm going to do everything I can to learn how. I am not going to let Bill beat us like this: we are going to remember how to enjoy ourselves it if kills us..._

 _...or better yet, kills Bill._

* * *

Pacifica wasn't sure when she'd started the evening patrol.

She knew that once she'd realized that she couldn't really sleep normally anymore, it had seemed a waste of time to just flop around and do nothing. Besides, lying in the dark with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling was an open invitation for the barbs in her back to send up those cute little reminders.

As she'd discovered, her doll body might be immune to pain but it wasn't without feeling: without the hustle and bustle of daily life to occupy her, the terrible _presence_ of the barbs lodged in her body would be felt again, like ice-cold nails slowly burrowing deeper and deeper into her flesh, painless but somehow still managing to rasp every nerve in her body raw. At times it even itched, as if there was a swarm of ants amassing beneath her skin, clustering in their billions beneath her muscles. But of course, this was an itch she couldn't scratch; she could only lie there, listening to the silence of the hotel and trying valiantly not to scream.

So, she had to get up and go – or else risk insanity.

Unfortunately, the hotel wasn't exactly overflowing with alternatives: the only TV in the building was broken, there was no music to listen to apart from the BABBA album still in the lobby, and the only games on hand were the crudely-painted cards that the refugees had brought with them. Conversation was also off the table, because almost everyone was asleep by now and she didn't feel like making any enemies just for the sake of a chat.

Of course, this was one of the many problems of returning to safety: now that Pacifica didn't have to spend every other minute of the day keeping watch, she didn't know how to spend her newfound free time. She _could_ kill a few hours training down in the lobby, but there were only so many ways you could telekinetically juggle furniture before it became boring; plus, after all the times she'd used fallen trees as barbells, soft couches and ottomans were a bit of a letdown.

So at some point in those grim, joyless hours of the night, she'd begun wandering, floating down the corridors and passageways of the inexplicably-oversized hotel with no aim other than to remain in motion. Eventually, she developed a circuit, orbiting the rooms of one floor before progressing to the next, until she arrived on the roof and repeated the whole thing in reverse.

After five or six repetitions, she'd come to the only-slightly-insane conclusion that continuing might be for the best: after all, what if someone attacked the hotel? What if a fight broke out between the refugees and the Society? What if someone needed medical attention? Pacifica might be the only one who could help. So, the aimless, meandering path through the building had become an official patrol. Now, she was keeping watch, just as she had back in the wastelands – except this time she had over two hundred people to keep an eye on.

If nothing else, it kept her busy.

However, at some point in the cold and lightless hours before the black sun rose, Pacifica happened to ascend to the rooftop – and found Wendy sitting up there.

She was perched right on the edge of the roof, claw-tipped legs dangling over a drop of several hundred feet, arms barely gripping the concrete ledge on which she sat. Her gaze was fixed on the street below and the few shadowy figures lurking amidst the alleys, but it was obvious that Wendy _knew_ that she was being watched.

For a few seconds, Pacifica could only hover there, caught between following the Northwest family lessons and following the lessons she'd learned from Dipper and Mabel. She could tell that Wendy didn't want to be bothered; she knew that the leader of the Society wouldn't have any compunctions against using violence to maintain her privacy if she really wanted it; she even knew that it was impossible to predict how Wendy could react. Plus, father's old lectures on not associating with "crazy homeless folk" still occasionally echoed in her mind no matter how many times she tried to shut them out. And yet…

…something about the sight of Wendy sitting on the edge of the precipice seemed to override all logical concerns. So, almost on instinct, Pacifica hovered over to her and sat down on the ledge next to her.

The minutes ticked by in silence, Wendy refusing to acknowledge Pacifica's presence, Pacifica trying desperately to think of something to say.

"I like what you've done with your hair," she said at last.

Wendy gave her a look of exasperation that could have seared the paint off a battleship. Fortunately, her eyes hadn't turned red-and-black, so Pacifica was evidently off to a good start.

"I'm serious," she continued. "The cropped look actually suits you. Once you get back to taking showers, you might actually manage to get it looking really stylish. Maybe you'll want to grow it back to your old length before, but-"

Wendy groaned loudly. "Is that really what you're here for? Fashion tips?"

"…just trying to break the ice."

"Good luck."

"Look, I'm just looking for something to talk about. I don't know much about you, you don't know much about me, so I thought I'd open with a compliment."

"Cute. Now tell me, what the hell do you want?"

"Just to talk."

"About _what?_ You just said we don't know much about each other and I know for a fact that we don't have a damn thing in common."

Pacifica's eyes narrowed. "Don't we? You've changed almost as much as I have: we both know what it's like to change so much that you can't even pass for a human being anymore. I'd say we've got that much in common. Also, there's one question I wanted to ask, as long as we're still talking: what are you doing up here? I mean, I'd have thought you'd be staying downstairs with the rest of the Society; they're your friends, right?"

Wendy slowly shifted in her seat, finally giving Pacifica her undivided attention. "I don't have much in common with them either," she said at last.

"What do you mean?"

"They still believe in the mission. They still believe in everything I told them: about how pointless struggling against Bill is, about how we could only earn death by enduring everything the world threw at us, and about how we needed to spread the truth wherever we went. Everything I spent the last few months teaching them… I can't believe in it anymore. Come on, you know all this by now: you saw me lose faith back there in the lobby."

"But can't you convince them to change their minds? I mean, I don't know about everything you did to make them join up, but surely you can _try_ to make them look at things differently."

"Maybe I can," said Wendy. "But it'd mean something terrible."

"What's that?"

"It'd mean that all my worst fears are true, and they didn't start believing because I showed them the truth: they started believing because I _forced_ them to. It'd mean I bullied them into joining, I took them away from their homes and their families, I forced them to see what I'd seen back in the mountains, and I made them too scared to say no. And if I can get them to change their minds, they'd do it because they're afraid of me and always have been. It'd mean…" Wendy sighed. "It'd mean I was wrong about myself."

"And what's the matter with that? In case you forgot, I've spent most of the past summer finding out that everything I knew about my family was wrong. And… well, no offence, but you've already been proved wrong about a few things in the last twenty-four hours."

Wendy almost managed a smile – the key word being 'almost.' "Yeah, I've been wrong, alright. I was wrong about Gideon, wrong about Dipper, and wrong about the Shapeshifter. And that's just the thing: it's snowballing. I could have lived with it if I was wrong about Gideon, but now it turns out I was wrong about _everything_. I haven't just made a few mistakes, I've…"

She suddenly turned away, suddenly unable to meet Pacifica's gaze.

"I've hurt people," she said quietly. "Four refugees ended up getting maimed in that first standoff with Gideon, and one of them nearly died, from what I hear. When I was still roaming the wastes, we forced people to listen to the sermons, even if it meant beating them to a pulp, and even after they joined, dozens of new recruits were killed when the initiation rites went wrong. I thought it was for the best; I thought it was the only thing I _could_ do if I ever wanted to escape from this nightmare, if I ever wanted anyone else to escape. And now, after all this time and all that blood on my hands, I find out that it was all for nothing: Bill was playing me for a sap all along."

"But he does that to _everyone,_ Wendy: you heard what Mabel said back in the lobby, about what Bill tricked her into doing – and since then, we've all had to do terrible things while we were still playing his games."

Wendy laughed mirthlessly, though it sounded more like a choked sob than anything else. "Except he didn't just trick me, did he? He didn't fool me into starting the Society or having people press-ganged; he didn't do anything to me once he was finished playing with my head up in the mountains. No. He didn't force me to play his games: he made me _want_ to play his games without me ever realizing it, then he let me loose on the wastelands, all because he knew it'd be funnier if he could just sit back and watch. Bill already turned me into a human Rottweiler… but if it turns out that nobody in the Society ever really believed except out of fear, I'm even worse than that. It'll mean that Bill _made me just like him."_

"That's not true and you know it."

"Oh really? I've seen the people who were made to work for him, the slave gangs he gathered up just for the hell of it: I did the exact same thing to the Society and I didn't even notice what I was doing. Who else but Bill would be that heartless? Answer me that."

"Wendy, if you were anything like Bill, we wouldn't be having this conversation. If you were really as bad as you think you are, you wouldn't have let Mabel stop you: you'd have just kept killing. Simple as that."

"And how the hell do _you_ know that?"

"Because you're not the only one here who's been forced to play a part without knowing it," Pacifica countered smoothly. "My family played me for a sap as well; they wanted to me to be just as heartless as Father was, and for a while, I was… right up until I met Dipper and Mabel. I could have ignored what I learned from them and just kept playing my parents' games; I could have even left everyone in the mansion to burn to death. But I didn't. Dipper taught me that I had a choice, and I chose to be more than another link in the world's worst chain. You had a choice as well: you could have killed Gideon, ignored Mabel and killed Dipper before we could find out who he really was, and you probably could have done even worse… but you didn't."

Shivering, Wendy turned to face her again, gills flaring slightly. "What are you trying to say?" she asked; her voice was soft now, almost tremulous… and were those tears in her eyes?

"You're still a good person," Pacifica replied. "And nothing Bill did to you could possibly change that, not while you're still alive to set things right."

For two agonizing minutes, there was silence.

"How am I supposed to set _this_ right?" Wendy demanded, almost tearfully. "I've seen how Mabel looks at me: she thinks I'm crazy. And how can I even speak to Dipper after I tried to _kill_ him?"

"I think _trying_ would be a good place to start. After all, you're still their friend."

"Even though I'm nothing like the person they met back in Gravity Falls? I'm not who I used to be, in case you hadn't noticed. All the cool, calm, self-assurance they remember me for? That's long gone."

"Even so. Besides, it's never too late to reinvent yourself: maybe you can learn to be like your old self again, if that's what you want."

In spite of herself, Wendy smiled. "Since when did you start giving out so much advice?"

"Let's just say that Bill gave me a lot of time to think about what makes people tick; Father was already giving me lessons on how to manipulate people, and I suppose I learned enough in Weirdmageddon to put all that knowledge to better use. Plus, after all the months I spent babysitting my own parents, offering concerned advice seems almost second nature by now."

"But it wasn't as simple as that, was it?" said Wendy. "There's things that happened to you that you haven't told anyone about, that you don't _want_ anyone to know about."

"Of course. Dipper and Mabel have enough to worry about without hearing all about _my_ problems."

"That makes two of us."

There was a pause.

"Maybe we could share, then?" she said at last.

Pacifica's brain immediately executed the mental equivalent of a double take: quite apart from the fact that there were still a few leftover pockets of Northwest instinct that were still demanding to know what the hell " _shar-ing_ " was, the notion of telling another human being so much about herself was against her nature. Even before Weirdmageddon, she'd been a very private kind of girl, never letting her coterie of paid friends know what she really thought or felt – mostly because there honestly wasn't that much of a disconnect between herself and her performance. The night of the annual party had been the first time she'd ever expressed real guilt and fear to someone outside the family; up until then, she wouldn't have even _dreamed_ of apologising in public, much less having the breakdown she'd suffered in front of Dipper. But even after that, she'd still done her best to keep the mask on in public, either continuously sniping on about lawsuits or determinedly shivering in the cold before Mabel convinced her to wear the llama sweater. And now…

Well, now she was just wearing a different kind of mask, wasn't she? Granted, it was a lot more caring and pleasant that her old one, but it was still hiding a lot of things she'd rather not share. The feel of the hooks in her back, for one thing; the concerns about her parents, for another. And then there were all those anxieties regarding what happened to Dipper, her worries over Mabel's state of mind, and the terrible uncertainty of what was going to happen next. And in spite of everything she'd learned so far, it still felt _wrong_ taking the mask off.

"I… um… it's… it's a long story," Pacifica stammered. "A very long and boring story."

"So's mine," said Wendy, completely deadpan. "Doesn't mean it isn't worth telling, if only to get it out of your head. Besides, what are you afraid of, really? Weirdmageddon's made us equals: we've all done things we're ashamed of."

If anything, it took even longer for Pacifica to think of a response to this.

"I don't want Dipper and Mabel to know," she said at last. "They'd only worry about me, and they've got enough to deal with right now."

"And I don't want either of them to think any less of me. Sounds like whatever we talk about can stay our little secret. Come on Pacifica, it's not like we can judge each other for what happened: like you said, we don't know each other well enough for that. Besides, whatever it is you want to talk about, it can't be anywhere near as bad as _my_ story."

"Do you promise not to pity me?"

Wendy smiled – not the brutal shark-toothed rictus she'd worn when she'd been advancing on Gideon, but a genuine human smile. "I promise," she said.

And somehow, as the two of them settled down to talk, Pacifica had the most inexplicable feeling that everything was going to be okay…

* * *

"…what the hell is _that?"_

"I think that's the sun, dude."

"No, not _that,_ the thing beneath it."

"I could be wrong, but I think that's supposed to be a city."

Robbie groaned and tried to figure out how they could have possibly travelled so far and wandered for so long to end up on the doorstep of _this_ jumped-up shitpile. How long had they been walking anyway? Months? Years? With day and night not always guaranteed, they had no way of telling the time, and because most of the playgrounds had their own specific rules, there was no point in finding out even if they ever managed to scavenge a watch from the ruins they occasionally passed. Time had ceased to exist out here in the spaces between playgrounds, and the only way Robbie and Soos could measure it was by the times they stopped for bathroom breaks or supply hunts. Of course, there was one other way to mark the time, but Robbie honestly didn't feel like using it – in part because it was based on something he'd never _ever_ get used to, no matter how hard he tried.

Since he'd joined them, Soos had died over thirty-seven times.

The first time, it had been while they were raiding a trashed semitrailer for canned food: Soos had decided to give the zombies a break from retrieving the supplies, and instead marched into the wrecked truck himself. Unfortunately, the stockpile of canned peaches had already been claimed, and when Soos had forced his way in through the back doors of the truck, the resident scavenger had panicked, drawn a gun and shot Soos right between the eyes.

Even after hearing all about Soos' inexplicable ability to return from the dead, Robbie had been a mess for hours after seeing that, gasping and puking in horror even as the scavenger had run for his life. He'd been even more shocked when Soos – now sporting a head that was once again symmetrical – had galloped over the hill with a shout of "you okay, dude?"

After that, most of his other deaths had been due to starvation: because there'd been so little supplies to be found even when they had found the occasional ruined gas station, Soos had insisted that Robbie have them all. It had been hard to eat while watching him slowly wasting away, but Soos had kept reassuring every step of the journey, even as he'd grown less and less lucid before finally slipping into a coma and dying – again. On every single occasion, Soos would reappear just over the opposite hillside less than a split-second after death, fresh as a daisy and totally unharmed.

He hadn't even lost weight.

But by far the most disconcerting part of the whole thing was the point when Soos asked, "Dude, why don't you start bringing my old bodies back as zombies? They'll help speed up the journey."

Robbie had argued with him for almost an hour, citing everything from the risk of disease to the simple fact that he didn't want to be followed around by multiplying zombie doppelgangers of his only living friend in the world. But in the end, he'd given in: controlling the zombies was getting easier and easier as time went on, and as much as he hated to admit it, piggybacking on their shoulders was a lot easier and quicker than trying to walk and direct them at the same time.

So, in the weeks that had followed, they'd rocketed across the wastelands on a giant serpent of reanimated corpses: the zombies had done the running, while Robbie and Soos had sat up top in improvised sedan chairs made of driftwood and tarpaulin (with the occasional seat cushion from a wrecked car thrown in for the sake of comfort). Strangely enough, none of the newly-dead Sooses ever seemed to decompose for more than a few days before abruptly pausing in mid-rot. Perhaps it was some new aspect of Robbie's powers, or maybe it was sheer good luck. One way or another, monsters tended to stick clear of the growing horde of undead from then on.

With nothing to trouble the two of them any further, Soos and Robbie had marched briskly onwards. They'd found places where the world had literally turned upside down and forced them to walk along a ceiling above an infinite void. They'd traipsed across realms of meshed-together biomes where frostbitten glaciers rubbed elbows with mosquito-infested jungles. They'd tumbled aimlessly through corkscrew-shaped playgrounds where the entire local population had been reduced to screaming wallpaper gorily layered against the twisting walls.

And now they were here, gazing up at this… city.

"WELCOME TO CIPHEROPOLIS," the sign above the gate read. "ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE."

The sun had only just dawned, but already Robbie had seen enough to make him wonder if they should even bother stopping. If the sounds and the smells wafting from over the walls was any evidence, there was obviously some form of human life here… but judging by the armed guards and the cartload of bullet-ridden corpses beyond hauled out the front gates, it probably wasn't worth the risk just to get a closer look.

Plus, "Cipheropolis" wasn't exactly a name that inspired confidence.

And yet…

It could be Robbie's imagination, but he had the feeling that they'd been led to this place, as if they'd been unconsciously following some kind of homing beacon across the playgrounds; Soos had voiced the idea as well many times, muttering that it simply _felt_ as though they were going in the right direction. Assuming Robbie wasn't mistaken and Soos wasn't being an idiot again, what could they have been brought here for, if that was the case?

More importantly, what were they supposed to do now that they were finally here?

Robbie was halfway through turning around to ask Soos that very question, when the air was split by a thunderous, ear-splitting roar of sound from somewhere overhead, a wall of eardrum-popping sonic tsunami hammering down on anything within range and blasting dust from every surface in earshot.

Drawing aside the tarpaulin, he looked up just in time to catch the sight of something _massive_ rumbling across the horizon at an impossible speed, a gargantuan agglomeration of whirring gears and hammering pistols and thousands upon thousands of tons of tarnished metal. It was almost impossible to describe the actual shape of it, or even what it might be: every time he was close to working out an edge or a straight line, more details crept into view – a wall became a chaotic mass of camshafts and pulleys and god only knew what else. In the end, it was simply a massive floating chunk of machinery floating through the sky, as translucent as a ghost yet substantial enough for the wind of its passage to blast Soos's hat off as it thundered across the sky towards them.

Judging by the screams of terror from beyond the wall, the inhabitants of the Cipheropolis had clearly noticed that shape approaching them; even from here, Robbie could clearly work out the sounds of hundreds of people stampeding in all directions, knocking things over, breaking down doors in a frantic attempt to escape.

By now, the thing was positioned directly above the city, and Robbie realized that it wasn't moving on its own: it was being towed by-

Robbie blinked rapidly, certain that he couldn't have seen what he thought he'd seen. He rubbed his eyes for a moment, then looked again, certain that the vision would be gone when he looked next. But no: there it was, tiny but somehow towing the impossible monstrosity behind it.

A chariot, drawn by four ashen-pale horses.

And somewhere in the back of Robbie's shellshocked brain, a long-forgotten snippet of the Bible rippled out: " _And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."_

* * *

And somewhere, not too far away, a man in a crimson coat was clapping his hands in glee.

"At last, at last, the movement ends and another begins," Nyarlathotep chortled. "We've had the overture; we've had the opening notes, we've established the melody; we've even kicked up the tempo a little bit. Now it's time to _crescendo…"_

Still chuckling, he reached for the stolen phone in his pocket, and began dialling the number he'd been waiting all day to call…

* * *

Back in the Fearamid, a distinctly uneasy silence had settled over the throne room.

Bill's foul temper had cooled immensely since he'd had the bright idea of bringing the Shapeshifter out of cold storage, and the regular reports he'd been receiving from Amorphous Shape had restored him to an almost copacetic mood. But for all the improvements, it still wasn't enough: he wouldn't – and indeed _couldn't_ – be satisfied until the Axolotl and whatever body he was currently inhabiting were brought before him, ideally in pieces. Bill didn't know how the old bastard had brought in that weird spider-goddess from another dimension, and he didn't know how he'd managed to outrun the Henchmaniacs after being out of practice in the art of possession for Y'vnt only knew how long; frankly, he didn't much care. He could have these questions investigated when Axolotl was dead: for now, he was still on alert.

So for the time being, Bill remained seated atop his newest throne of calcified bodies, his one eye fixed on the wall directly ahead of him, his long fingers idly tapping out an alien rhythm on the armrests. Under the brim of his hat, his eye betrayed no emotion, nor did his posture reveal anything other than mild impatience. In the last few timespans since Amorphous Shape had hurried off, he'd been almost calm: he hadn't raised his voice, he hadn't turned gigantic and red, and in fact hadn't changed shape in any way. He merely sat there, waiting for the next call.

Around him, the Henchmaniacs busied themselves with the quietest games they had on hand, none of them daring to disturb Bill's reverie: some played blackjack, a few made do with craps, while Kryptos and 8-Ball assembled at the pool table for a tournament – using Toby Determined as the ball, of course. In all cases, the currency of choice was slaves, each one gagged, muzzled and shock-collared, just to make sure Bill wasn't troubled by unnecessary noise.

Of course, Bill probably wouldn't have noticed if Lava Lamp had let off a battlefield nuke in the middle of the room: all his attention was focussed on the tiny phone sitting on the left armrest next to him. He'd conjured it himself a few timespans ago, shaping it from the bones of the ancient Minoan dead and carving it with arcane sigils unknown even to the inhabitants of this puny dimension, just so he could keep track on his Henchmaniacs without having to leave the party.

Ever since he'd been sent out to retrieve the Shapeshifter, Amorphous Shape had been very timely with his reports: every week on the local calendar he would call to let them know that the mission was all going as planned and the Shapeshifter was loyal as an old sheepdog fed with human gibbets. Of course, this was on _local_ time, back in whatever hick timezone Gravity Falls now existed in (truth be told, Bill was losing track): by the Fearamid's standards, it took barely two hours for a new report to arrive.

So far, the news had been pretty positive: the Shapeshifter was cooperating with commands and following the trail to the best of its ability, and according to Amorphous Shape, they were making good progress; since that Axolotl couldn't easily track its approach as he had with the Henchmaniacs, Shifty was rapidly closing in on his hideout, and managing to keep up with the cowardly bastard on the rare occasions he decided to swap safehouses. For all Bill knew, it would only be a matter of time before the intruder's head was sitting on his mantelpiece, embalmed and ready to display to the guests.

Wouldn't _that_ be something to imagine?

 _Look,_ he'd say to all the cowering human masses. _See that severed head? That was the last being in the multiverse who could have saved you. So if any of you are getting some crazy ideas about being rescued at some point in the future, give 'em up right now: you're my toys now, and nothing is going to get you out of the rumpus room now, not even death, not even the zodiac-_

There was a sharp buzz from the phone, and Bill's ringtone echoed out across the throne room, filling the air with the joyous, atonal cacophony of a classically-trained concert pianist being rhythmically hammered facefirst into a casio keyboard. Bill glanced at the phone as he picked it up, but he already knew long before he saw the arcane caller ID that it could only be Amorphous Shape.

"Shaaaaaape!" Bill cackled into the phone. "Great to hear from you! How's the chase going? Is ol' Shifty getting close to the prize?"

But the only response was a deep, resonant ripple of laughter, and when it finally subsided, the voice that replied belonged to a stranger.

"You have no idea, Billy-boy," it said. "You have no idea."

For five nerve-wracking seconds, Bill could only sit there, staring in bewilderment at the phone in his hand; he tried vainly to place the voice, hoping that something familiar might leap out from his memory – but no luck. Whoever this was, it _wasn't_ the Axolotl: even in human disguise, the bastard salamander wouldn't have been able to disguise the distinctive energy in his voice.

"Who is this?" he demanded at last. "Where's Amorphous Shape?"

"He's just having a rest. After Shifty left, the bunker was free, so he decided to make use of the cryotube. As for who I am… well, let's just say that I'm a seeker of amusements, much like you."

"Is that right?"

"Absolutely. The main difference between us, of course, is that I'm older than you. Older, wiser, cannier, and altogether more capable of withstanding boredom. But enough about me. What are you going to do when you learn the truth, Bill? What are you going to do when the final truth of entropy comes and nails you right between the eyes?"

"What do you want?"

"Ah, it's going to be a joyous time when you realize just how badly you've shot yourself in the foot, Billy-boy. I can scarcely imagine the rhapsodies of despair that will burst forth from your mind when the scales finally fall from your eyes. It won't be now, that's for sure – it won't even be next week. But it will happen… and when the time comes, _I will be there to_ _ **drink your tears."**_

"SHUT UP AND TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT!" Bill roared. "DID THE AXOLOTL SEND YOU? IS HE TOO COWARDLY TO TALK TO ME HIMSELF, IS THAT IT? ANSWER ME! WHAT… DO… YOU… _**WANT?!"**_

"Just to deliver a message, of course. See, whatever you were having Shifty do… well, it's not getting done now. The Shapeshifter's busy doing his own thing now, and he's having a _whale_ of a time doing it. So sorry, but I think he's got away from you. I mean, you can try looking for him if you like… but how can you find someone who can be _anyone._ Needle in a haystack doesn't even cover it, Billy-boy!"

"Do **not…** call me that."

"Why not? You're enough of a child as it is, little triangle. Still too big for your right angles and sharpening your points just to make yourself look like a grown-up. I _know_ you, Billy-boy…"

This time, Bill couldn't even speak: he could only snarl incoherently as the rage rippled up and down his contorting figure.

"Oh, and just one more thing you might want to cogitate on, golden boy: _it's already too late."_

"What?"

But the stranger had already hung up.

"What do you mean it's already too late?!" Bill screamed into the phone. "You thought it was worth mentioning, you asshole, so tell me! WHAT DO YOU _MEAN_ IT'S ALREADY TOO LATE?! _**ANSWER ME!"**_

If something with no face could ever look smugly amused, the phone had somehow managed it.

Suddenly bigger than the entire throne and glowing a furious shade of crimson, Bill threw the phone across the throne room with a howl of rage, his powers blasting it to pieces long before it hit the ground. For a moment, he could only hover in the air, seething quietly as he struggled to get his temper under control and return to normal size.

Then he realized that everyone in the room was starting at him, and hastily took charge. "Right," he snapped, "I want someone to get over to the bunker in Gravity Falls and find out what happened to Amorphous Shape _right now._ We need to know what happened before whoever this guy is tries it again."

Lava Lamp mumbled in the affirmative, and vanished.

"And I also want all hands on deck in finding out where that signal came from: maybe he's working for Axolotl, maybe he's another interloper – we need to nip this in the bud _yesterday._ That means everyone, by the way, so someone had better go back to Mabeland and get Pyronica – I don't care how much fun she's having with Shooting Star, she needs to be back here on the double. Clear?"

Keyhole nodded, and teleported himself away as well.

"And once that's done, you're going after Axolotl."

"What, again?"

"Don't you 'what again' _me,_ 8-Ball. We have an intruder that can ruin all the work we've done, and he's loose in my kingdom! So far, he's been unable to tap into his true power, but if he ever finds the nullifying runes I added to the dimensional substrata back at the start of Weirdmageddon, _we are_ _ **fucked**_ _._ So, it's vital we catch him _NOW._ Clear?"

"But how did you know to add the runes back when this all started, boss?"

"Just shut up and do as I say! How difficult can it b-"

But before Bill could finish his sentence, Keyhole and Lava Lamp reappeared, both of them clearly aghast – and more upsettingly, alone.

"And just what the hell are you two doing back here so soon?" Bill demanded. "Where are Amorphous Shape and Pyronica? Why aren't they with you?"

For the next ten seconds, the two Henchmaniacs quietly argued among themselves as they struggled to nominate a suitable bearer of bad news. In the end, Keyhole stumbled forward and explained himself as best as he could. Immediately, there was a gasp of horror from the onlookers.

A long and distinctly awkward silence erupted across the throne room, as Earth's Lord and Master slowly processed what he'd just been told.

" **WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THEY'RE DEAD?"** he howled. _**"WHY ARE THEY DEAD?!"**_

By way of an answer, the bodies of Pyronica and Amorphous Shape were slowly brought in on stretchers, to the accompaniment of gasps and yelps from the onlooking Henchmaniacs: whatever had happened to the two of them, it hadn't been pretty.

Pyronica had been completely decapitated, and her headless corpse was covered in dozens of ragged, bloody craters, almost as if someone had driven a giant drinking straw through her flesh; for good measure, every last drop of her blood had been siphoned off, and most of her internal organs had been pulped and drained off as well. For good measure, someone had wrapped a silk ribbon around her severed head, and a tiny gift card had been jammed between her teeth. _To a very special guy,_ it read. _PS: Sorry I couldn't keep the head in a state of perpetual screaming, but that's the way the cookie crumbles!_

By contrast, Amorphous Shape had been ripped open at the middle, his gaudy shell torn open to expose the flesh of his body; organs had been shredded, bones had been shattered, and huge handfuls of meat had been simply torn away – as if with teeth. Something had _eaten_ him.

"What the hell _happened?"_ Bill demanded.

Lava Lamp shrugged. "There was signs of struggle all over the place, but no sign of who did it, boss. Maybe the Shapeshifter did him in."

"But what about Pyronica? She was nowhere near the Shapeshifter!"

Now it was Keyhole's turn to look blank. "Whatever happened, boss, it was bad: Mabeland's in ruins, Dippy Fresh is dead, Judge Kitty's dead, and nobody left alive can answer any questions – they're all in hiding, I think. Oh," he added nervously, "And Mabel's gone."

"Gone? GONE? YOU MEAN WE'VE LOST SHOOTING STAR? WHERE IS SHE? WHERE COULD SHE HAVE GOT TO?!"

"I dunno, boss. I found Pyronica's body in Eternal Summer, and I managed to find traces of a portal to another playground – that's where I found the severed head, see – but other than that, the trail's gone cold."

Bill's mind raced. They'd _lost_ one of the zodiac; somehow, one of the toys he'd gone to so much trouble to house and feed and torture so very specifically… had _escaped._ Either there'd been some kind of freak accident that had killed Pyronica and given Shooting Star a chance to escape – or someone had broken in and rescued her. This had Axolotl's dirty fingerprints all over it, but how could he have managed to do this much damage with his powers still nullified? Perhaps this mystery caller was helping him, but what _was_ this stranger and how could he be so powerful? To kill a Henchmaniac and rescue one of the zodiac would take-

He stopped mid-thought, suddenly derailed by a new and more troubling idea: if Axolotl and his new pal could break into one prison, _they could do it again_.

Frantically, he tore open a dozen portals in the air around him, each one revealing a different playground, each one looking out at one of the tailor-made prisons he'd assigned to the zodiac. But already he could tell that it was as he feared.

Question Mark was gone, as were GIFfany and the faux Melody.

Red had left her playing field, having last been seen making a beeline for the Drowning Lands.

Northwest Mansion was deserted, the throne missing barely half its barbs.

Gideon's little refugee camp had long since been emptied and buried under the snowfield.

Zits was nowhere to be found in the City of the Dead.

And…

Bill's eye widened in shock and disbelief.

Fez, that cheating bastard, had somehow managed to escape from the Museum _and_ beat his own self-loathing to death.

The Toymaker, who'd previously seemed perfectly content as master of the Forge and builder of playthings, had not only absconded – _but taken the entire Forge with him!_

And Fordsie, his favourite, his best candidate for Henchmania, the nearest thing he'd had to a friend among human beings, was _gone_. Apart from a few mad scribblings on the floor, the Dome of Wishes was empty; the reservoir of power had been pumped dry and the failsafe trap had been triggered, so by now Sixer should have become a full-blown Henchmaniac. So why wasn't he here? Why wasn't he by Bill's side, praising his genius and bowing to his magnificence? Why wasn't Fordsie _his?_

And where were they all?

Then, the answer struck him like the proverbial thunderbolt: why was he sitting here moping when he had two perfectly good witnesses to the disaster? Yes, Pyronica and Amorphous Shape were dead, but it wasn't as if that would be an obstacle to him now; after all, he'd brought over five hundred billion human souls back to life at last count, usually for the same shits and giggles that had inspired him to murder them in the first place. Bringing back Henchmaniacs would be a cinch.

So, reaching out towards the two mangled bodies with all his reality-warping power, Bill forced the energy of life back into Pyronica and Amorphous Shape, willing their souls to return to their corpses.

Nothing happened.

The two bodies twitched for a moment, then went still.

Puzzled, Bill tried again – only to realize that all the second tries in the world wouldn't make a difference in this case: there were no souls to return to the bodies. Whoever had killed Pyronica and Amorphous Shape, it hadn't just torn them apart, drank their blood and ate their hearts: it had _eaten their souls._

The two Henchmaniacs weren't just dead – they were gone forever. And judging by those terrified expressions, the other were already noticing the fact that they were up against a foe that could put them down permanently.

There, in the awkward silence of the throne room, Bill began to tremble with rage. At first it began with only a slight tremor of the hand, but gradually it worked its way up his arms and across his body, until he was literally shaking in mid-air, his body rippling with pent-up wrath. His mind was blank except for the blackest, maddest rage he'd ever felt since he'd first left the Second Dimension behind, and sooner or later, that anger had to find voice… but he couldn't find the words. Words had finally escaped him, eluded all grasp and left him quietly gurgling on incoherent nonsense. But even if he could find it in himself to speak sense, his usual mouthless speech wouldn't have been able to convey the rage and frustration and fear eating him from the inside out in that moment.

So instead, he reached up with suddenly incandescent fingers and seized his face, nails digging into the gap between his eye and his bow-tie, and with one almighty _wrench_ of tearing flesh and spurting blood, tore himself a new mouth. Power crackling, he shaped the gory trench in his body as best as he could, swiftly forming red lips, jagged white teeth and a writhing forked tongue.

And all the while, from the moment the bloody crevasse in his face had opened, he was screaming, pouring all his fear and anger through his new mouth in a single, unrelenting scream.

On and on it went, pummelling the onlookers with noise until it seemed that nothing could be spared the sound: windows shattered, machines broke down, cards erupted form their decks in all directions, gambling tables caught fire, slaves collapsed in weeping piles of madness, Toby Determined through himself into the corner pocket, and even the Henchmaniacs could only cover their ears in pain.

Almost two minutes went by before the scream finally came to a close, not because Bill had run out of breath (he had no breath to run out of, really), but simply because he couldn't see the point in continuing.

The echoes died away, and the hole torn in Bill's face gradually faded into nothingness.

And in the ringing silence that followed, 8-Ball asked, "Boss, what do you want us to do next?"

"Get out," Bill whispered.

"But if there's something that can kill Henchmaniacs out there-"

" _ **GET OOOOOOUUUUUUUUTTTTTT!"**_

As one, the Henchmaniacs scattered in all directions, either flying, teleporting or just sprinting into the shadows – hastily taking their slaves with them as they fled.

In their wake, they left Bill, still quivering with rage.

* * *

For over an hour, he could only sit on his throne and wonder what could have possibly have gone wrong to leave him saddled with this many mistakes. When he was in the mood to focus, he'd be able to watch the recorded footage culled from the various playgrounds for evidence of where his playthings had run to – something he'd originally set up for his own pleasure, he noted bitterly – but for now, he could only stew in his own frustrations.

And then, just as he was starting to wonder if it might be time to conduct some kind of a purge of the human population just to draw the zodiac out of hiding, the answer hit him head-on.

 _Time!_

Why had he been so upset about the jailbreak and the loss of two Henchmaniacs when he could simply turn back time and literally undo everything that the Axolotl's accomplice had done in the last few timespans? After all, the zodiac weren't immune to time manipulation like Axolotl was, and neither were the Henchmaniacs. One swift rewind, and his toys would be back in their prisons, and he could literally _ask_ Pyronica and Amorphous Shape what had happened to them?

It was so simple that he had to laugh; all the fuss and commotion he'd kicked up, when the easiest solution in the world had been sitting under his nose all along!In fact, the only downside was that it didn't work on Axolotl.

So, giggling triumphantly to himself, Bill raised one hand, summoning up all the power over time Weirdness afforded him, and snapped his fingers – readying himself for the familiar rush of excitement and the roar of rushing wind that accompanied each of the last few dozen jumps through time he'd taken.

Instead, there was only an awkward silence, broken by the sound of time stubbornly refusing to budge.

Maybe he hadn't been concentrating properly. Raising his hand and feeling the energies course through it for the second time in almost as many minutes, Bill snapped his fingers once more.

But again, nothing happened.

Puzzled and more than a little alarmed, Bill tried again.

Still nothing.

An ice-cold droplet of terror landed in the very core of Bill's physical shell and began slowly freezing his internal organs. By now almost frantic, he tried one last time to shift the temporal energies around him, this time applying every last atom of his being to brute-forcing the flow of history.

But once again, history refused to change. And this time, as the ripples pulsed across reality, he realized why: something was blocking his control over time – something almost human, something that seemed uncannily like…

 _Shooting Star?_

How could she be doing this to him? Did she even know what she was doing? From what little his senses could reveal, whatever power was being exerted over his own, it was doing so _unconsciously_ \- meaning that whoever had sabotaged him wasn't even aware that they'd managed it - adding insult to injury as far as Bill was concerned.

But how could _any_ of the zodiac become powerful enough to block his influence over _anything,_ much less time itself? They were just humans! Ordinary humans with no real powers of their own – or at least, that was how it should have been…

In the end, though, there was no point denying the threat: regardless of whether it was Mabel or not, there was something out in the world that was now keeping him from manipulating time, and would presumably do so indefinitely. From now on, there would be no more loops in time, no more studying the past, and no more reversing history – meaning that whatever happened next would be permanent from now on. Somewhere in his kingdom, there was someone or something that might just be able to kill him… and because of Mabel, there'd be no way he could rewind his way out of trouble.

It was exactly as Axolotl's graffiti had warned him:

No extra lives.

No second chances.

Nothing but death.

And in the terrible silence of the throne room, Bill Cipher began to cry – the low, gasping sobs of a man who had suddenly realized what that bright light at the end of the tunnel really was.

Had any of the Henchmaniacs been listening, they might have heard him whispering something between his sobs, something half-obscured by tears, but still just distinctive enough to be recognizable. But of course, there was no one there to hear, and so Bill's terrified weeping had no audience to hear it except for ruined machines and echoing silence… and, of course, the red-coated figure still watching from the shadows.

"No… No, no, no… it's not fair… I… I did everything right. I did _everything_ right this time…"

* * *

A/N: This chapter's soundtrack choice is **I Was Lost Without You** from _Mass Effect 3._

Up next...

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Vmgilkb hlnvsld hgroo wizdh mvzi  
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Blfi slfitozhh rh ifmmrmt old...**


	35. Fondest Greetings To You All

A/N: And at long last, I'm back! The world's gone crazier than usual, and I am absolutely okay. A hearty thank-you to all who reviewed, favourited and followed!

So, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is still not mine, and neither are the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft, least of all _Fungi From Yuggoth._

* * *

As it soon became apparent, the members of the zodiac had all been busying themselves with their own affairs when the impossible shape appeared in the skies over Cipheropolis.

Dipper and Mabel had been joyously scouring the markets for a DVD copy of _Ghost Harassers;_ Wendy was leading her troops on an exercise run across the rooftops of the city; Pacifica searched the local clothiers in search of clothes fashionable yet practical enough for her purposes; Gideon did his best to keep his convalescing parents as comfortable as possible; and Soos and Robbie, meanwhile, were simply trying to make sense of the madcap city they'd found themselves approaching.

But the moment that colossal agglomeration of rust and gears pierced the clouds and blotted out the sun above Cipheropolis, everyone dropped what they were doing and made a beeline for the Rallying Flag Hotel. Even those of them who'd never seen or heard of the place until that day found themselves drawn directly to the Rallying Flag, following instincts they could neither explain nor resist.

Somehow, all of them knew – without even looking up – that the shape in the sky was headed for the hotel…

* * *

Dipper and Mabel were first to arrive on the scene.

The moment she'd realized that the panicked crowds had grown too thick to navigate, Mabel had turned to Dipper, ready to very carefully ask for a shape that would help them through the streets – only to find that her brother was already sprouting wings and close to seven feet tall.

 _Right, almost forgot. He's spent the last thirty years being the Shapeshifter; by now, transforming's easier than walking for him. Silly me._

So, she'd clambered aboard the giant hummingbird-like creature that Dipper had become, and they'd both gone rocketing away across the skylines, dodging chimneys and soaring over rooftops at a speed that would have left conventional aircraft in the dust. Given that there wasn't much to see apart from pollution and ad hoc architecture, Mabel had spent most of the ride alternately covering her eyes against the brutal gusts of air and giggling like an idiot at every violent swerve Dipper took.

Eventually, they'd skidded to a stop right in front of the hotel, Dipper's clawed feet striking sparks on the road as they did so. Then, as Mabel hastily dismounted and Dipper resumed human form, Gideon had burst through the hotel doors, hobbling as fast as his crooked little legs could carry him.

"What _is_ it?" he gasped, struggling for breath.

"Your guess is as good as ours. Can you sense anything about it? I mean, there's got to be someone up there thinking about stuff, right?"

"Jheselbraum hasn't taught me how to reach that far just yet, so no thoughts or emotions so far. All I can tell is that there's a _lot_ of minds in that thing, whatever it is."

"Perfect," said Dipper wearily. "Just what we needed: an invading army right on our doorstep."

Mabel patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. "Lighten up, bro-bro: we've got an army of our own, remember?"

"If you can call a few hundred undertrained refugees with alien weapons an army, then sure," said Gideon.

There was a chuckle from somewhere overhead, and then Pacifica hovered into view, still carrying a shopping bag in one porcelain arm. "Don't forget the telekinetic doll," she added blithely.

A moment later, Wendy landed smoothly on her feet next to them, having jumped from the top of the building just across the street; after a slight delay, the Society of the Enduring assembled around her, leaping, flying, oozing or simply lumbering into a battle-ready formation. "Is that the new-and-improved Fearamid up there?" she asked breathlessly. "Is Bill back on our trail?"

Dipper shook his head. "I dunno, the Fearamid looked pretty weird when they threw me out of it back at the start of this mess, but it didn't look _that_ crazy."

"Besides," Gideon chimed in, "If that was Bill up there, he'd have attacked by now – blown up half the town, killed a few people, done something to terrorize y'all at the very least. Right now, that thing's just sitting pretty. Almost like it's… waiting for something."

"Waiting for what?"

"Good question. I don't have the answers right now, but…" Gideon's brow knotted suddenly. "Someone's coming," he whispered urgently.

Immediately, everyone tensed up, half-expecting a blast of Weirdness to erupt from the thing in the sky and wipe Cipheropolis off the map. When no city-levelling blast arrived and Gideon clarified that the 'someone' was approaching from around the corner, the Zodiac prepared themselves for battle: Wendy drew her axe; Gideon readied a derringer-sized blaster; Pacifica telekinetically summoned up an arsenal of debris; Dipper became Shifty again, and moulded his arms into a brutal pair of five-foot-long Swiss army knives; and Mabel prepared to summon up all the power she'd mastered so far (inadvertently breaking several clocks and watches throughout the neighbourhood).

But to their mutual surprise, the decomposing army that finally rounded the corner was led by two familiar faces.

"SOOS!" Mabel shrieked.

"Dudes, you have no idea how good it is to see you!"

Almost in unison, Mabel, Wendy and a suddenly-human Dipper broke ranks and tackled the mechanic to the ground in a titanic group hug.

"I'm here too, by the way," deadpanned Robbie.

"Oh, sorry. Little bit carried away there. Anyway, it's great to see you again RobAAAAARGH WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EYES?!"

"And why are you surrounded by zombies?"

"And why do some of them look like Soos? And is that a zombie version of Dipper and mein there as well?"

Robbie winced. "That's a very, very long story. The short of it is that I'm a necromancer now. And blind. These dead guys see for me, and they've been helping us across the desert for the last few weeks. Not bad for someone who started off as a zombie shepherd, believe me. Now, it's my turn for questions: Dipper, why did you have Swiss army knives for arms a few seconds ago? Where did the army of mutants and the levitating doll come from? And _what the hell did you do to your hair, Wendy?"_

"Way to focus on the important details, Robbie," said Wendy, her gills flaring in exasperation.

There was a long and awkward pause, as the assembled members of the zodiac belatedly noticed the unearthly stillness that had suddenly descended upon them. By now, the streets were deserted, the people having either retreated indoors or fled for the outskirts of town; in any case, they'd taken all the usual hubbub of the city with them. In their absence, the refugees now watching from the hotel windows held their breath in anticipation, and the Society of the Enduring braced themselves for the worst. Even the shape in the sky had gone deathly quiet, effectively plunging all of Cipheropolis into a terrifying silence that only grew all the more arduous for the time spent waiting for something to break the impasse.

Then, without warning, _something_ dropped from the chaotic jumble of tarnished mechanisms overhead and plummeted out of the sky like a meteorite; however, just before it actually hit the ground, it paused in mid-air about fifteen inches above the cobblestones and stayed there, hovering just above the street. Now that it was in full view, the object turned out to be a thirty-foot-long sheet of metal bordered with guardrails, equipped with a tiny stepladder and gate barred with a chain – making the whole thing seem uncannily like an amusement park ride to Mabel. There was even a little "YOU MUST BE _THIS_ TALL TO RIDE" sign on the railing.

For thirty seconds, the zodiac could only stare at the platform.

Soos was the first to break the silence. "Dude," he muttered, "Is it just me, or is that an elevator?"

"More importantly," said Wendy, "Is it a trap? I mean, it might not be Bill up there, but we still don't know who's in control of this thing."

"You didn't see the guy in the chariot, dude?"

"…what guy in _what_ chariot?"

"There was a chariot dragging this thing across the sky," said Robbie helpfully. "I couldn't see who was in it, but I'm pretty sure it flew back inside. Maybe the driver's waiting for us."

Pacifica looked from Robbie to the sheet of metal and then back again. "Maybe it's a trap, or maybe not," she said at last. "Maybe this has been set up by Bill or maybe by something we've never seen before…. But if there's someone out there that's powerful enough to drag _that_ thing around the sky, I don't think they'd need to bother with traps."

"Thank you," said Gideon smugly.

"Question is, who's going to put this thing to the test? I mean, there's still a risk of – _Mabel, wait!"_

Ducking under Wendy's arms, Mabel marched over to the waiting elevator, unclipped the chain and stepped aboard. A moment later, Dipper joined her.

"Well, that's over and done with!" said Mabel, cheerily. "Anyone else along for the ride?"

* * *

As a precaution, Wendy and Robbie left their respective armies guarding the hotel (minus the two zombies Robbie needed to see with); the seven members of the zodiac would be traveling minus their entourage for a change.

As soon as they were aboard and the chain was clipped back in place across the entrance, the platform rose suddenly into the air with a sharp jolt that nearly sent the zodiac toppling over. "Elevator" didn't really do this thing justice: the platform _rocketed_ into the sky at a speed not seen since the extinction of commercial airlines. Within the first five seconds, they'd risen above the rooftops and were ascending steadily towards the clouds; ten seconds, the city's disorderly skyline looked like a jumble of cheap plastic models squatting amidst the world's biggest sandpit; fifteen seconds, and Cipheropolis was a dwindling blob in a haze of sickly yellow and grey.

Twenty seconds later, the shape in the sky loomed overhead, a giant clenched fist of pipes and gears and rumbling mechanisms and cables wide enough to span a city street. There was power around this thing, a spark in the air that Mabel had long since recognized as heavy-duty magic, and as they drew closer, they could just about hear the heavy throb of billions of machines tirelessly at work within the dilapidated walls. The more Mabel listened to it, the more it sounded like some giant iron heart furiously pounding away inside a steel ribcage, as if this floating piece of junk was somehow _alive._

Then, just as it looked as though they were going to continue ascending until they crashed headlong into the base of the thing, a fifty-foot stretch of bulkhead slid apart, revealing a hatchway wide enough to encompass the entire elevator. Inside, the interior of the shape was at first nothing more than a shaft stretching sharply upwards, but as the elevator continued rising and Mabel's eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom, she realized that she could see machinery in the distance: giant smelting vats ablaze with light; welding torches sending hailstorms of sparks flying into the darkness; pneumatic pistons thundering ceaselessly for unfathomable reasons; and most tellingly of all, mechanical arms at work on robotic assembly lines.

It was, Mabel realized, a factory.

Eventually, another hatchway opened above them, and the elevator shivered to a halt in the centre of what had to be some kind of concourse: all around them, staircases and catwalks and elevators rumbled off in every direction imaginable. However, the next port of call was of secondary concern next to the army standing between them and the stairs. All around them, hundreds of misshapen semi-human figures stood in readiness, their bodies layered with glistening crimson armour, their pincer-like hands bristling with unrecognizable weaponry.

"What _are_ they?" Dipper whispered.

"Rust Thralls," said Wendy, readying her axe. "I've seen them before: they're Bill's toy soldiers. If he wants entertainment and he can't be bothered making it himself, he sends the Thralls in to raise hell."

"Then why aren't they attacking?"

"Good question. Looks like they're waiting for something…"

"Or someone."

As if in answering, there was a loud crash from somewhere in the distance, followed by the sound of several dozen oil drums toppling over like ninepins. "Sorry!" hollered a voice. "Still haven't quite gotten the hang of the brakes on this damn thing. Just give me a minute while I put these horses back in my head…"

There was a pause, as the echoes gradually died away; for almost thirty seconds, the gigantic concourse was silent except for the sound of the wheels in Mabel's head spinning.

"Is it just me," she began, "Or did that sound like-"

"Who else could it be?" Dipper finished. "I mean, you remember the time he-"

"-backed the car into a dumpster and got it stuck to his rear bumper, yeah! But how could he be _here?"_

"Maybe it's another one of Bill's tricks. Maybe the Henchmaniacs are just using his voice to lure us in. I mean, we all saw what Bill did to him back in the Fearamid."

"Or maybe they're keeping him prisoner here," Wendy added. "For all we know, _this_ was the playground Bill made foor him.

"Or, maybe… _just maybe_ …" But of course, Mabel couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence: the tension in the air was so thick you'd need an ice-cream scoop just to breathe, let alone focus. She was so excited and simultaneously agitated, she could barely stand still; a moment longer, she'd probably start bouncing up and down on the spot out of sheer nerves.

And then, with a muffled roar of sound like the rumble of a passing freight train, a long figure rocketed into the concourse at an impossible speed, his feet not even touching the ground. Weaving past the ranks of Rust-Thralls, he descended less than ten feet from the elevator and landed on his feet with an earthshaking thud directly in front of the zodiac.

He wore the same clothes, the black suit with the bolo tie and the fez. He had the same build, the same broad shoulders, the same once-fit physique marred by a more-than-middled-aged paunch. A quick look at his hands confirmed that he had the expected number of fingers, along with the rough, calloused knuckles of a lifelong brawler. He even had the same heavily-lined face, the same cinderblock jaw, the same slightly-bulbous red nose… but for the longest time, Mabel couldn't quite bring herself to believe that it was really him. Even with the newfound sense of hope she'd found in the last couple of days, she couldn't quite forget the doubt and paranoia of her time in captivity – and neither could any of the other zodiac.

Then a jubilant smile erupted across the new arrival's face, and in that moment, there could be no doubt.

"Kids!"

"GRUNKLE STAN!" Dipper and Mabel shrieked in unison.

As one, the two of them leapt forward and engulfed him in a hug so powerful that it nearly sent Grunkle Stan toppling to the ground like a felled tree. "You," he laughed, "Have no idea how good it is to see you two!"

"Mr Pines, as a valued employee, can I get in on this group hug as well?"

"Aw, get over here and join the huddle, Soos! And Wendy, if that's you under the buzzcut, you're a Mystery Shack employee as well: join the hug!"

Soos and Wendy obediently piled into the hug, Wendy's newfound strength very nearly knocking the entire huddle flat on its collective backs. For the next minute and a half, the five of them could only stand there, hugging one another and too overwhelmed with emotion to speak coherently – all while the rest of the zodiac looked on in bemusement.

Eventually, Gideon coughed and asked, "Can we get in on the hug as well?"

"Gideon, if this is your way of asking for a job at the Mystery Shack, you might want to rethink the terms a little."

"Har har har."

"What happened to you, Grunkle Stan?" Mabel asked, as the huddle finally parted. "What is this place? And… why are your eyes glowing?"

There was a distinctly uncomfortable pause, as the faint glow in Grunkle Stan's eyes slowly faded. "Sorry," he said at last. "That happens sometimes when I get a little carried away. Long story. Oh, and don't worry if you see my shadow starting to act up: he's basically harmless."

Mabel stared down at the inky-black pool of shadows that Grunkle Stan cast on the floor; maybe it was just her imagination, but it seemed to have more than the usual number of limbs, and all of them appeared to be reaching out for her. And… was something _moving_ under Grunkle Stan's skin, or was that just a trick of the light?

"But how did you get here?" she continued. "How did you escape from your prison?"

"Easy: I had help. It took a lot of work, but Ford and me broke each other out and made it as far as this place: it's called the Forge."

" _The Forge?"_ Wendy echoed, incredulous.

"You've heard of it?"

"Just about every single mutant and monster I've recruited has heard about it! This is supposed to be the place where the Rust Thralls are made, Bill's own private weapons factory. God, you know what you've done? You've just stolen Bill's own personal toyshop! But what about the Ruinous Toymaker? I mean, I've heard so much about him in the last few months, and no-one's ever seen him, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't just let you just walk off with this place."

"Who's the Toymaker?" Dipper asked.

Grunkle Stan coughed nervously. "Uh, yeah about that-"

"MABEL!"

Recognizing a familiar voice, Mabel turned around just in time for a human-shaped blur to slam into her at high speed. A split-second later, the glossy dark hair and the sweet, studious face of Candy Chiu was staring up at Mabel, arms wrapped around her in another crushing hug.

"Candy! It's so good to see yoAAAARGH YOUR EYES AND YOUR HANDS AAAAAARGH!"

Candy blinked, dull crimson eyes gleaming in the dim light. "Oh," she said at last. " _These_ things. The Toymaker gave me these. Aren't they great? I can see in infra-red! I don't even need glasses anymore!"

"But… but…"

Mabel's jaw flapped aimlessly in the air as she struggled to think of a response. Finding none, she looked to Grunkle Stan for answers. "By the time we got here, she'd already been halfway converted," he explained. "Whatever Bill did to her, it was bad enough that she thought volunteering for this stuff was the only way out of it. We've tried to talk her into letting McGucket patch her up with tank-grown replacements, but she just doesn't want to hear it."

"Why would I?" said Candy, grinning fit to burst. "I'm _better_ now!"

"Hang on," said Wendy, her tone once again distinctly suspicious. "Why were you trying to get _McGucket_ to patch her up?"

"I was just getting to that-"

From somewhere just above their heads, there was a polite cough. "Sorry," said a familiar Appalachian-accented voice, "But could we pick up the pace a bit? It's just that I've been waiting to introduce myself for a while now, and I'm feeling a bit stupid sitting here in the dark…"

Grunkle Stan sighed deeply. "Come on in, then; they're about as ready as they ever will be. Brace yourselves, guys."

And then _he_ lowered himself into the room, and it took all of Mabel's self-control not to let out a yelp of shock at the sight: it looked as though someone had tried to make a centaur out of scrap metal, only to spill coffee all over the blueprints and end up making a lobster-human hybrid instead. From the waist up, the figure clattering along the wall towards them was still somewhat recognizable as a human being, if only vaguely. From the waist down, he was a metallic horrorshow of arms and legs, a pulsating, concertinaing mechanical nightmare.

But there was still no getting around the fact that, for all the extra eyes and additional limbs, he was still Old Man McGucket.

"Hello," he said, almost incongruously shy. "I'm told I used to know you. I hope you're not offended if I don't recognize any of you; Ford's been trying to help me remember, but it's still uphill work."

There was silence, as the members of the zodiac silently digested this.

"Is everything alright? You look a little upset."

If anything, the room grew even quieter. In the end, Wendy was the first to break the silence: "You mean after all the trouble we went to help you remember your past, Bill just wiped it away?"

And for the next ten second, everyone was talking was talking at once.

"Dude, please tell me we don't have to look for his memories again; I lost that dysentery chart a _long_ time ago."

"Probably not gonna be as simple as that, Soos."

"Aw, I was hoping we'd get a second viewing of Robbie admitting he got bailed out by a twelve-year-old."

"Am I just keeping a tally of things I'm never gonna live down, or something?"

"But how could have he just erased all the memories? I mean, I'm pretty sure Bill doesn't actually have that kind of power over human minds. I mean, unless he actually operated on McGucket's brain and… oh crap, that's exactly what he did, isn't it?"

"Stop reading his mind, Gideon."

"But I wasn't! I was just thinking about it!"

"Then don't."

"Mabel, are you alright? You're looking really pale."

Mabel had no idea how she looked at that point, but in that moment, she felt as if she was on the verge of throwing up. Her stomach was slowly being squeezed from the middle like a tube of toothpaste, bunching itself up into one great big dumbbell of incoming puke. Ice-cold beads of sweat were gathering on her forehead, and despite the warmth of the concourse around them, she actually found herself shivering as the chill worked its way down her spine. What she'd witnessed had been bad enough already, but the implications were even worse; already, the all-too-familiar sensation of crippling guilt was pressing down on her, slowly crushing her into the floor with every passing minute. She thought she'd been able to purge it from her brain the moment Dipper had remembered himself, but now it was back again, worse than ever. And there was still one element missing from this particular reunion, one thing that she dreaded seeing more than anything else – because she knew it would almost certainly be the worst of all.

In the end, she had to ask, even though she didn't want to; the only alternative would have been to stand there and let the sudden silence eat her alive.

"Where's Grunkle Ford?" she asked quietly.

There was a distinctly pained pause. "He's… a little different now," said Grunkle Stan. "Getting out of prison changed him. A lot, actually. He's still in there, but it's a bit tricky to understand him, and sometimes he gets confused and…" He sighed wearily. "It's still him, okay? I just need you to keep that in mind."

He glanced over his shoulder and called out into the darkness surrounding the concourse. "Ford? You can come out now."

For a moment, there was only deafening silence. Then, from out of the shadows, a lone figure slowly floated towards them, looking for all the world like a marionette carried on invisible strings: nothing about him moved even slightly, his posture remaining completely fixed and his flight unerringly level as he slowly drew closer to them. Nor did his expression change at any point, instead remaining perfectly neutral even as he set eyes on the zodiac: no smiles, no frowns, not even the slightest hint of a raised eyebrow.

Eventually, he was close enough for Mabel to recognize specific details, and all at once the nightmare was coming true: he was dressed in black, just as he had been on the day he arrived through the portal, but instead of his old adventurer's gear, now he wore a heavy black cloak that looked uncannily like the skin of some hideous bat-winged monster draped across Ford's jutting shoulders. He still wore the tattered remains of his old turtleneck and trousers, but his boots and gloves were gone; his body was now so thin it seemed starved, and the flesh on his bare hands and feet seemed to have hardened into a rough, bony shell. But worst of all were his eyes: once full of life and always agleam with determination, now they were nothing more than pitch-black craters in his skull… and as he drew closer, Mabel realized that she could see stars in those empty sockets.

Dying stars.

" **The mirror is intact again,"** he whispered, his voice a distant, rumbling echo of impossible sound. **"But nothing can erase the cracks. Yes, the glass is cracked but so very clear..."**

He paused, and then his lightless eyes seemed to focus on Mabel. Pale lips drew back in a ghastly parody of a smile, revealing teeth like marble tombstones set in dark grey gums, and in that moment, it took every last atom of Mabel's willpower not to scream.

She was dimly aware of Dipper's hand in hers, and the way that his grip seemed to warp and change as the seconds ticked by; it turned out that Dipper was so frightened that he was instinctively shapeshifting into any form that might help him escape or fight for his life, and growing all the more frantic as the possibilities gradually dwindled.

Then, at last, Grunkle Ford spoke again:

" **Hello, Dipper. Hello, Mabel."** Two oily black tears fell from his starry eyes and coursed along his cadaverous white face like veins. **"It's so good to see you again."**

Mabel opened her mouth to speak, but all that emerged was a choked sob of terror. A quick glance around her revealed that the others were similarly muted, all of them frozen in fear as Ford advanced on them; only Grunkle Stan and McGucket seemed unaffected.

" **Ignore the oldest emotion: it is only an illusion of the senses."**

Wendy seemed to recover herself first, and just about managed to gasp out the words "what are you talking about?"

" **All who treasure life fear death above all."**

"What?"

" **You feel fear in my presence; the living instinctively kneel before death. Weirdness has altered you beyond the norm, and so you will gradually become immune."**

"Like I said, guys," Stan reassured them, "It's still him. He just goes on these weird spiels from time to time. Give him a couple of minutes and he'll be back to his old nerdy self… for a while, anyway."

"But what _happened_ to him?"

" **The same thing that happened to all of us. Bill Cipher intended to break us: some of us he meant to remake us in his image; others he meant to destroy entirely… but we have beaten him at his games. We are now elevated, either through the gifts he offered by miraculous accident, and now we can take the fight to Bill."**

"Great!" squeaked Dipper, clearly trying to sound more confident than he felt. "Let's form the Circle and get this over with!"

" **The Circle is no longer an option."**

"What?"

" **The pieces of the puzzle are broken. The patterns on the pieces have changed. The ritual is useless now."**

"Oh."

" **The only recourse is war."**

Dead silence reigned for almost a minute and a half.

Then, Robbie let out a flat mutter of "What."

" **It can be done. You have an army. Gideon has an army. Wendy has an army. Fiddleford has an army… but more importantly, we all have power."**

"But why is that?" Dipper asked. "Why did we get these abilities? I mean, I can kinda understand why Pacifica and I have powers; Bill gave them to us. And Wendy, she stole them from across the Wastelands. But what about Mabel and Soos? They weren't given any powers. And from what I've heard so far from Robbie and Gideon, they were only given a tiny bit of power so they could work or suffer."

" **Weirdness changes everyone and everything. A curse placed on the land may leak into the bodies of those imprisoned in it. A meaningless gift may grow overtime."**

"Ah."

" **The important thing is that we are armed with powers… and those powers can only grow stronger with every passing day. Soon, these weapons can be turned against Bill himself."**

"Alright then, General Patton, what's the plan?" Robbie snarled, rapidly losing his grip on composure. "How are we supposed to bring down Bill _now_ when he's got the entire world under his thumb? The guy's _all-powerful!_ We had a giant walking shack-mecha the last time we tried to fight him – well, Dipper and Mabel did, I was still a statue – and even that didn't work! How can we stop him on our own when he's basically a god and our best weapon isn't working anymore?! You're the genius here, so tell me! Give us some goddamn plans!"

" _Robbie…"_

"Sorry, but the point stands."

" **I don't have a plan."**

"Oh, even better!"

" **I…"** For the first time since he'd appeared before them, Ford appeared uncertain. **"My mind… didn't escape the transition from Human to Other intact: there are distortions, fixations, elements that cannot be controlled. I cannot lead you to war. I can only advise you and fight alongside you. The task of leading must fall to those who have led before, to those who first took the fight to Bill."**

As one, all eyes turned to Dipper and Mabel.

"You've _got_ to be kidding me," they said, in perfect unison.

" **Death cannot lead us to war. I-"**

Suddenly, Ford's speech shifted and warped, the deep, monotonous syllables dissolving into a long stream of incoherent gibberish: to Mabel's ears, it sounded like the time Grunkle Stan had accidentally played that Bulgarian language lessons tape in reverse. It carried on for almost thirty seconds, and it only seemed to grow more incomprehensible as time dragged on.

"Sorry," said Stan, once the typhoon of gibberish had finally subsided. "He does that."

There was an awkward pause.

" **You stopped Bill before,"** said Ford at last. **"You can do so again. You led us before, even when all hope seemed lost. You can do so again."**

"But how?" Dipper demanded. "We don't know if we're strong enough, we don't know how to improve our powers, we don't know where to strike first –"

"We don't know what we're doing!" Mabel concluded loudly.

Grunkle Stan shrugged. "So, what else is new?"

" **There is one other thing I can do for you, before we begin.** **Bill chose four of us to act as his agents, his harbingers of doom in the wars against reality, and ordered the Ruinous Toymaker to build him an arsenal worthy of his favourite toys. These weapons can be turned against Bill just as surely as any of the powers we wield. And so, since Bill is no longer in charge of us, as Death I must present them – in the order I see fit…"**

He took a deep breath, and the dying stars in his eyes flared into supernovae.

" **COME AND SEE,"** Ford boomed. **"Pacifica Northwest, step forward."**

Without hesitation, the tiny doll hovered off the elevator and knelt before Ford, though it was clear to all and sundry that she wasn't sure why she was doing so. A good look at her face revealed that she was every bit as frightened as the rest of them, but for all her fear, she met Ford's gaze without the slightest tremor.

" **And lo a black horse; and she that sat on him had a pair of balances..."**

From the depths of Ford's nightmarish coat, an ornate wooden box suddenly floated out, opening itself as it did so. Inside sat a necklace of braided silver, adorned with a pendant shaped like a set of scales; and as Mabel watched, the necklace magically glided free of the box and draped itself around Pacifica's neck.

" **A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine,"** said Ford. **"Rise, Famine."**

Pacifica rose to her feet – and as she did so, a ghostly, spectral horse sculpted from pitch-black smog _poured_ itself into existence before her. After a brief echoing neigh, it immediately locked its hooves in position and stood obediently before its new owner, head bowed in readiness.

"Oh," she muttered. "That makes sense. At least I already know how to ride; guess I can thank mom for those lessons I took back when I was little. But what's this thing around my neck doing?"

" **Enhancing your powers,"** said Ford. **"Boosting telekinesis, matter manipulation. Fusing with your being on a spiritual level."**

"Doing _what_ now?"

" **Consider it mark of your progress: from now on there are no such things as limits. Continue to train, and you will grow stronger still – and stronger yet beyond even hat."**

"Fair enough. Does this guy here have a name or can I give him one myself?" She patted the horse's mane, eliciting a weird, echoing whinny.

" **Bill had no care for names; they were meant to serve as tools. If you wish to give your steed a name, then do so."**

Pacifica thought for a moment. "Onyx," she decided, stroking the unearthly creature's mane again. "I'll call him Onyx."

The horse let out a happy-sounding snort. Then, without warning, he dissipated back into a cloud of smoke and promptly vanished into Pacifica's left ear.

"W… where'd he go?"

" **Back inside your mind. He will remain a part of your psyche until you have need of him, and then he will take physical form again. Now… Wendy Corduroy, step forward."**

Wendy Corduroy stepped off the elevator, albeit far more warily; even as she got to her knees, Mabel could tell she was itching for a fight.

" **And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to her that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto her a great sword…"**

Another box emerged from Ford's coat, this one large enough for a baseball bat to sit comfortably inside… but what lay beneath the polished cover was, as stated, a sword – three feet long and unadorned except for a tiny scarlet gemstone on the pommel. But as Wendy grasped the hilt, the sword instantly erupted into blazing crimson flames, seemingly harmless to the wielder but almost certainly deadly to anyone who got in her way.

" **A companion to your axe and a revelation to your enemies,"** Ford explained. **"Rise, War."**

As Wendy got to her feet, another spectral horse rippled into view, red as her hair and hissing with fiery vapour. It nudged her with its snout as it cantered over to her, practically bucking her onto its saddled back as it did so.

"WHOA! Okay, I guess this guy suits me just fine. I'll call him…" Her face went blank for a moment. "Khan," she said at last.

As one, Soos and Robbie offered puzzled-looking stares. Somewhere in the distance, the ghostly howls of a Canadian Ham rippled across reality.

" _What?_ I don't sleep through all my history classes, okay?"

"Let's just hope he's a little tougher than the waxworks version of Genghis Khan we met earlier this summer," said Mabel, completely deadpan.

As if in answering, Khan whinnied happily.

There was a pause, and once again, the figure in the dark cloak seemed hesitant. **"Mabel,"** he said softly.

"I get it, you want me to step forward."

" **No, I…"** A look of pain crossed the deathly features.

" **I missed your birthday,"** he said at last, and for the first time since she'd seen him emerging from the shadows, he seemed like _himself_ : the droning, starry-eyed parody of himself was gone, and in his place was the same shy, regretful man who'd been reunited with McGucket in the Fearamid so very, very long ago.

" **I wish we could have found a better place for you and Dipper to celebrate it,"** he continued. **"And I know I've caused you a great deal of pain and doubt over the last few months of linear time… but I just want you to know that…** **Dszg szkkvmvw gszg wzb dzhm'g blfi uzfog. R hzd dszg szkkvmvw, zmw R pmld blf nfhg yv uvvormt tfrogb yvblmw zoo rnztrmrmt, yfg blf dviv mlg gl yoznv."**

"What do you mean?" Stan asked. "What happened?"

Mabel looked blankly from Ford to Stan. "You understood that?"

"You didn't? I actually thought that was pretty understandable by Ford standards."

"Grunkle Stan, he was talking gibberish again."

"I swear, that time every word out of his mouth was English!"

Ford coughed with a sound like a dozen coffin lids slamming shut at once, seemingly changing the subject.

" **I know these are hardly the best birthday presents I could offer you – hardly something that's worthy of you as a human being; believe me, I know my brother can offer far worthier gifts, once we have time for a proper party. And I know both of my gifts to you have Bill's dirty fingerprints all over them, but Fiddleford and I did our best to make them worthy of you in spite of their origins. Besides, Bill expected you to be imbued with the powers of Mabeland, not of the Endless Summer; so we had to tailor them to you as you are, not as Bill would have wanted you. And so…"**

Once again, Ford's eyes blazed with convulsing suns and bleeding nebulae. **"And behold a white horse,"** he intoned. **"And she that sat on him had a bow…"**

Once again, an ornate wooden box slid free of Ford's coat – but at the same time, Mabel's grappling hook slowly floated out of her pocket and rose sharply into the air.

Mabel was halfway through opening her mouth to say something when she realized that there was now a stream of mechanical components emerging from the box and incorporating themselves into the grappling hook: whatever had originally been in the box, Ford was disassembling it into the parts of an upgrade.

What emerged was a gleaming masterpiece of polished steel contained within a handcrafted leather holster: the grip was polished ivory, the barrel was carved with indecipherable runes, the cable glowed with an unearthly blue light, and when Mabel unholstered it, it almost seemed to become part of her hand. It was astonishing; it was magnificent…

It was the Grappling Hook 2.0.

" **And a crown was given unto her… "**

Another box was opened, and as expected, a tiny gold tiara sat inside: it was a thing of beauty, studded with emeralds and formed into elaborate swirls of gleaming metal like the waves of an ocean. And at the very front and centre of the golden band sat a single garnet, vivid magenta in colour – the exact same shade as Mabel's shooting star sweater, in fact.

"It's beautiful," she murmured, smiling up at Ford.

She meant every word of it, because she could see just how much effort Ford and McGucket had gone to just to remodel the crown: Bill wouldn't have given her anything that would match her colours; Bill would have given her something horrific, the better to torture her.

A smile brightened Ford's pallid features. And this time, instead of simply allowing the crown to float into position, he took it out of its case by hand and fitted it very carefully onto Mabel's brow. Immediately, she felt a surge of power rippling through her being – a spark of energy hissing through her blood like adrenaline: immediately, her abilities felt much easier to reach, the memories that activated her powers closer at hand.

"Thank you," she whispered.

" **And she went forth conquering, and to conquer,"** Ford concluded reverently. **"Rise, Pestilence… and always remember that you won your game: Bill never broke you."**

And when her horse appeared before her, it was sculpted from pure light, a dazzling, handsome steed of incandescent brilliance that glowed brighter even than the horses of Grunkle Stan's chariot. But whereas Pacifica's horse appeared stately and dignified whilst Wendy's was just as much a go-getter as its rider, Mabel's horse seemed… cute. Huggable, really.

There was only one thing to call him, really. Maybe it was another way of proving to herself that she could every bit as whimsical as she had been before Weirdmageddon, maybe it was another way of proving that she really was a good person… or perhaps it was just because it sounded good to her.

"Sunshine," she said, smiling. "Your name is Sunshine."

The horse whinnied proudly, and in that moment, all the guilt in the world wouldn't have been able to outshine the sense of triumph that filled Mabel's heart.

Ford cleared his throat uneasily. **"As it's your birthday as well, Dipper-"**

In spite of himself, Dipper actually managed a laugh. "Please don't tell me I'm the _Fifth_ Horseman," he said, shaking his head in bemusement. "I mean, you're Death, so I'm pretty sure there can't be anyone else after you."

" **No, no. Of course, Bill might very well have meant you to become the Beast from the Ocean to his Great Red Dragon, but that's beside the point. The point is, it's your birthday, and I owe you a present…"**

Ford stretched out his right hand, and in the centre of his stark-white claw, a ghostly image began to form: at first, it was merely a blurry, transparent mass of colours slowly coalescing into a single shape, but in a few seconds, it had solidified into a solid object – one that Mabel recognized at exactly the same time as Dipper.

"Journal 3!" he exclaimed. "How is this – how can it – I saw it burn with the other two!"

" **Indeed it did. This is a memory of the book. Look inside and see."**

Tentatively, Dipper took the offered gift from Ford's hands and opened the journal to a random page. "It's just as it was," he whispered. "Right down to the additions Mabel and I made over the summer. But…"

His eyes narrowed. "Hey, what's all this about McGucket and the Gremlobin? This wasn't in the book before!"

" **Examine the final pages."**

Frantically flipping through the book, Dipper only grew more incredulous as the seconds ticked by. "This is impossible," he said at last.

"What?" Mabel asked. "Why?"

"The last few pages here… they're talking about things that never happened: according to this, the memory gun trick worked, Bill was erased, Weirdmageddon stopped before it went global and we were able to restore Grunkle Stan's memories! Then we went home and Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan went sailing around the world!"

"We did _what,_ now?" Stan bellowed.

"This didn't happen, Grunkle Ford," Dipper plunged on. "You know that, right?"

" **Yes. But this isn't just a memory of what was lost. It's a memory of something that might have been. All of this could have happened, and in some worlds, it did happen… but Bill cheated."**

Dipper continued leafing through the book for a moment, eventually stopping at one page towards the end. Very slowly, his eyes widened.

" _My grandnephew's fears are unfounded,"_ he read aloud. _"All I feel toward him is love and pride. He is a wiser man at thirteen than I was at thirty. He has an incredible future ahead of him—one in which he will hopefully avoid repeating my terrible errors."_

There was a pause, and when Dipper looked up from the book, his eyes were shining with tears.

" **I give you this memory not only so you can look back on the good times, but also so that you can understand yourself. I know of the past you share with Shifty. I know of the self-loathing Bill cursed you with. When those doubts rise to plague you again, remember this book, and know that you are better than Bill ever was or ever will be."**

Dipper opened his mouth to say something, but emotion had clearly gotten the better of him. Instead, he simply threw his arms around Ford. And Ford, once again seeming more like himself than ever before, could only return the hug.

* * *

It was a long time before anyone was in any fit state to discuss anything close to business: the revelation of the Four Horsemen and the shock that had followed had pretty much taken the wind of their collective sails.

Eventually, though, the question had to be asked:

"What are we going to do now?" Gideon asked.

Mabel and Dipper exchanged nervous glances, as they swiftly realized that everyone was looking to them for the answer.

"Well," said Mabel, "I was planning on just finding Bill and kicking him back to the Nightmare Realm, but I'm open to suggestions. Can we actually do that, by the way? Are we strong enough to tackle him by ourselves?"

" **Not yet,"** Ford replied. **"Our strength is still growing. Even I have a long way to go before I could casually challenge Bill's power. However, there is always a weakness…"**

Dipper all but punched the air. "Great! Let's hear it then."

" **When Weirdmageddon went global, Bill altered the fabric of our world to keep out certain higher powers. The alterations he made are enforced by creations of pure Weirdness: he calls them the Cipherous Runes, and for their safety, they are kept hidden within the Fearamid at all times."**

"How do _you_ know that?" Robbie asked, more than a little suspiciously.

" **I can see them. My vision travels as far as death my go, and death surrounds the Fearamid at all times. And-"**

"Don't tell me: a lot of people are being killed there, I get it. So what happens without the runes?"

" **The higher powers enter, and Bill finds himself face to face with an enemy he cannot hope to resist."**

"Mr A," Dipper whispered.

"So all we have to do is attack the Fearamid, destroy the runes and that's it!" said Mabel excitedly.

"Oh is _that_ all we've got to do?" Wendy grumbled. "I don't know if you know this or not, Mabes, but the Fearamid's been beefed up a bit since we raided it. It's now _the_ most heavily-defended place in the entire planet – probably the entire universe, come to think of it. The only reason why I escaped is because Bill wanted to watch me run. Even if he doesn't have the Forge on hand anymore, he's still got millions of Rust Thralls in reserve; he's got the Henchmaniacs; he's got all the weird, gribbly things that showed up along with the Henchmaniacs; worst of all, he's still got all the freaky powers over reality he had at the start of Weirdmageddon. Like Ford said, we're tough, but we're not that tough yet. We need a different approach."

"We can't just sit here doing nothing while we wait for our powers to level up, though."

"What about guerrilla warfare?" Dipper suggested.

All eyes turned in his direction.

"Well, think about it: Bill isn't all-seeing in the real world. He can still be surprised, right? You saw how we caught him off-guard during the attack on the Fearamid. So what if we try that again? We attack places important to Bill, lure in his Henchmaniacs and whittle them down. Repeat enough times, we level the playing field: eventually, we'll have more troops than him and maybe enough power to bring him down in a head-on attack."

"What could be more important to Bill than the Fearamid?" said Pacifica dubiously.

But Wendy looked thoughtful. "From what I've seen, Henchmaniacs have their hangouts; plus, Bill _does_ leave the Fearamid to take in the sights every now and again – admiring his handiwork, most likely. He seems to be pretty damn proud of his creations out there."

"So if we started destroying them, maybe it'd be enough to get Bill to send in the troops!" As an afterthought, Mabel added, "It might not be perfect, but we've got a start!"

"Just one question, though," Grunkle Stan interjected. "What about all the people?"

"Sorry?"

"The playgrounds you're thinking of destroying – people are imprisoned there, right? So what are we gonna do about them?"

"He's right," said Robbie. "I wasn't alone in my prison: there had to be thousands of people in my neck of the woods alone, all locked up and working like slaves. If we start fighting out there, they're gonna get caught in the crossfire."

"Or worse," Wendy chimed in. "If Bill works out who's really attacking him, he'll do anything to draw us out of hiding – and the easiest way to do that'd be to torture or kill other human prisoners, then make sure we knew about it."

"How do _you_ know that?"

A look of pain flickered across Wendy's face and vanished. "Way of the Wasteland," she said obliquely. "If you can't hunt the prey, bait the trap and make the bait scream. I've seen it done enough times by Henchmaniacs and bandit gangs. Done it a few times myself."

"Right, very creepy. Forget I asked."

"And even if he isn't planning on luring us in using innocent people, this is still Bill we're talking about," Dipper added. "We all know how petty he gets: the moment things start going wrong for him, he might just start rounding up any humans he can find and kill them just for the heck of it."

"So we need somewhere to _put_ all these people," Mabel surmised. "Maybe we can hide them here in the Forge. I mean, this place has tons and tons of room. Plus, it's pretty important to Bill, right? He wouldn't blow _that_ up if he got the chance."

Several tense seconds passed as they mulled this over.

"…Maybe we shouldn't make bets on what Bill would or wouldn't do when he gets mad," said Dipper at last.

"Agreed."

"What about the Shacktron?" Grunkle Stan suggested. "What if we strip the unicorn hair off that and use it to build a fortress for all the refugees. Sure, we might not have much, but maybe we can pull off that "bigger-on-the-inside" trick that they like to use around here, create enough room and shield it with the unicorn hair."

Soos chuckled nervously. "Uh, sorry, Mr Pines… but the Shacktron isn't an option anymore."

"Why not? It was pretty smashed up last I saw it, but if that unicorn voodoo's still in place-"

"Bill kinda rebuilt it into an evil robot body for GIFfany and had her chase me down."

"GIFfany?" Mabel echoed. "I thought she'd settled down with Rumble McSkirmish."

"Dude, I thought so to. I think she took it pretty hard when McSkirmish ran off to fight Bill and never came back. Long story short, her body got possessed by this weird talking oil slick called John, and I don't think we can get it back."

" **The Black Signal,"** Ford intoned, his old self once again impossibly distant. **"The Zero-Point Pathogen. The Sizzling Celestial Syphilis. The Dreamers' Dream was given a voice. Now it has a body."**

"Is he alright?"

Stan sighed deeply. "Like I said, he does that sometimes."

"Well we need to think of _somewhere_ to put all these people," said Dipper.

There was a ripple of musical laughter from the shadows. "What a coincidence," said a mellifluous voice. "It so happens that I have the perfect place."

Then, _he_ appeared.

He looked human enough: in fact, from what Mabel could see of him, he actually looked quite pleasant – tall, dark and slender, always smiling and always jovial. Plus, after the muck and dirt of the Wastelands, the sight of his splendid crimson overcoat and tailored was almost refreshing. But as he drew closer, Mabel couldn't help noticing the faint ripples of power cast in his wake: by now, she could recognize magic energy almost on instinct, and this guy didn't so much reek of it – he _sparked_ of it. Whoever he was, he wasn't entirely human – if at all.

"You!" said Dipper. "The man from Camp Acheron!"

"I saw you back in the City of the Dead!" Robbie exclaimed. "You were the one who taught me how to use my powers!"

"… **The strange Dark One to whom the fellahs bowed… Silent and lean and cryptically proud…"**

"So nice to see you again," the man chuckled. "Okay, introduction time: I've gone by many names in history – Nyarlathotep, the Black Pharaoh, the Crawling Chaos – but for now, you can call me Mr Carter… and I'm here to help you."

* * *

It took over an hour of complicated explanations before anyone was ready to trust Mr Carter, and even then, they insisted on keeping their weapons ready at all times.

And when he asked for a moment alone with Dipper and Mabel – or, as he called them, "your esteemed leaders" – to discuss their first port of call, Wendy nearly went into conniptions. After about twenty minutes of tense negotiations, they eventually allowed for a private conference, but not without leaving Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan on watch, just out of earshot but close enough to intervene if anything went horribly wrong.

Even then, Dipper and Mabel were very careful to stay out of arm's reach of the intruder in their midst.

And of course, they both had questions for their apparent ally.

"Why are you doing this?" Dipper asked, before Carter could get a word in edgewise.

"Because I thought the pertinent details should be heard by the leaders of this little resistance movement first."

"No! Not that – why are you helping us? Why are you helping Mr A? What's in this for you?"

"I have my reasons."

"You said Mr A offered you something in return for serving me a picnic; what is he offering you this time?"

"Nothing, at least this time. Frankly, I've earned all the favours I could ever need just by saving the sad silly bastard's life. If I wanted to, I could happily swan off to some tropical island in another dimension and spend the rest of eternity enjoying everything I could earn off Mr A's boons and never have to give a damn about Bill Cipher ever again. This time, I'm in this for my own reasons."

"And they are?"

"Oh, reasons."

Mabel let out a noise that could have made Bill Cipher himself jump in fright. "Oh _would you just talk sense!"_ she yelled. "Stop being coy and tell us why you're doing this!"

Mr Carter chortled maniacally. "Oh, there's the Pines spirit!" he guffawed, clapping his hands with delight. "I'd worried that all the years of torment and hardship had eroded it, but there it is: the anger, the fire, the determination that can topple empires! Oh yes, I know I've placed my bets on the best horses in the hippodrome!"

"Are you gonna answer our questions or not?"

The chortling slowly subsided. "Perhaps I will, Mabel," he said at last. "Perhaps you'll understand better than anyone here."

"What do you mean?"

"We have something in common, child," Mr Carter purred. "We're both creators. Builders, artists, architects – whatever you want to call the vocation, we both take joy in creating something that will last, something that people can look upon and marvel. We both know what it is like to see our efforts take shape in physical form, to strive and struggle to extract meaning from the meaningless, to sculpt inert matter into something beautiful… and we both know the immense sense of satisfaction that arrives when we can rest from our labours and look upon our work. Nothing quite compares to seeing a masterpiece finished and saying to ourselves 'I did that. It was all me, in the end.' Nothing can take that away from you, not even Bill and all his tortures; that accomplishment will always be with you, gleaming in the dark like a beacon. You know what I mean: you've felt that rush of joy so many times, haven't you?"

And as disturbing as it was to admit she had anything in common with this impossible being, Mabel actually found herself nodding in agreement. Even in the depths of Mabeland, she'd been able to briefly take solace in drawing… and now that she was free, she had a shopping basket of wool and paints to look forward to when she next had a moment to herself.

"Thought so," said Mr Carter. "Yes, we each strive to create something wondrous. You have your sculptures, your sweaters, your dresses, and all those artistic experiments; and I have my designs, my long cons, my _social_ experiments… but most importantly, I have a world."

"A _world?"_ Mabel echoed.

"My home dimension. There is an Earth there, much like yours – but not quite like yours. Outwardly, its history seems identical to that of this one, from the rise of ancient Mesopotamia to the fall of the Berlin Wall. All the usual world powers are there, and all the usual political, social and economic foibles are in play. All in all, a world much like _yours_ was before Weirdmageddon. But here's the thing: it's only come that far because I willed it so. For over seven thousand years, I have secretly helped shape the development of human civilization on my Earth, protecting it from the excesses of my fellow Outer Gods and the upstart forces of the Great Old Ones. True, there were a few stumbles here and there: the fall of the great empires, the Dark Ages, the great pandemics, the World Wars; there were even moments when my brothers and sisters made their presence felt. But I was always there to set things right: I worked on the Manhattan Project, but I ensured the Cold War never heated up. I allowed for minor conflicts, with the occasional bit of terrorism, famine and plague on the side, but never enough to endanger the entire world. I stacked the decks in humanity's favour, and because of that, the 21st century plunges onwards uninterrupted on my world: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the parties get longer and more debauched and all the more desperate, and the supernatural remains a secret. My world is safe because of me, Mabel Pines, and though the apocalypse is always forecast, no cataclysm disturbs it."

"But why? No offence, but you don't exactly seem like the kind of guy who'd do all of this out of the goodness of his heart."

"Quite so," Mr Carter chuckled. "You see, I've seen apocalypses many times before, Mabel: this isn't my first rodeo. And the important thing about the end times is that they represent _a release._ All the tensions, all the sorrows, all the anxieties and anger and obsessions and hidden madness a culture has accumulated over the centuries are finally unleashed in a colossal eruption of violence, iconoclasm and chaos. For a time, they live in a world where nothing is true and everything is permitted: any crime can be enacted, and any injustice can be set right. Regardless of whether the end was natural or artificial in nature, regardless of whether it ends in extinction or not, the past no longer has any grip on the world. All the fears that possessed the people have vanished – after all, the worst has already happened. And thus, the old trees of the forest burn, and new growth rises to replace them, and the people can live unhampered by the cloying grip of a bygone age… and that is something I cannot allow, not if I want that rich, full feeling of satisfaction."

"So your world's just another playground for you? You really are just like Bill, then."

Carter's head hinged backwards and split into a fang-lined maw, oozing flesh bristling with millions of dagger-like teeth. With a thrill of horror, Mabel realized she'd caught a split-second glimpse of the _real_ monster hiding beneath Mr Carter's mask: this was a tiny preview of how he _really_ smiled when he wasn't in disguise.

"See? You _do_ understand me," he said, as his face slowly returned to normal. "Billions upon billions of years before humanity was born, I was once very much like Bill Cipher. For all I know, there are still a few interdimensional iterations of me that are still like him. Countless eons past, I lived a fairly simple life: I played my pranks, I schemed with the best of them, and I trampled the world under heel time and again from as long as my father remained asleep. But eventually, my games and stratagems ceased to entertain me. I could drive nations to war, turn brother against brother, have the babies strangled in their cribs and make the mothers drive their eyes out in despair… but what good would it do? Their suffering was so very short term, their deaths pedestrian and ultimately premature. In much the same way, an apocalypse ended the fun, cut short the suffering of my pawns. And so, I set my sights on much longer games with more rewarding stakes. So, I set out to build instead of destroy.

"The society I shaped from Earth's clay granted me a veritable theme park of suffering and despair: the people remain crushed in the grip of modern life, unsatisfied with mundane existence, frustrated by thwarted aspirations, and often never becoming aware of just how unhappy they really are. Every career leads to disillusionment, from science to the clergy. The mighty hunger for more, the lowly yearn for an escape, and those who try to make a difference are met only by apathy and contempt. Every now and again, I allow some unlucky soul to get a glimpse of the world beyond their own – Cthulhu rising from the ocean, Shoggoths lurking in the heart of Antarctica, the community of Deep Ones within Innsmouth, even my own little side-gig on stage – and they report what they see to the rest of the world. Nobody believes them, but on some level, humanity hopes that this time there will be an ending. But it never comes.

"Thus, my greatest achievement: a world that is forever teetering on the brink of the end times but never reaching them. The humans on my Earth cry out for release, for an apocalyptic climax that will free them from the endless cycle of suppression and disappointment, for the day when 'all the earth will flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom' as dear Howard put it. But it never arrives. The suffering of my world, _my_ _ **masterpiece,**_ is eternal… as is my satisfaction."

"Or so I thought," he added.

Mr Carter paused for a moment, and for the first time since the conversation began, he seemed almost angry. "Now, Mabel," he said at last, "Imagine, if you will, the surge of anger and indignation that would flood your veins at the thought of someone – some spoiled brat with a god complex – barging into your home and casually destroying your best works. You'd be enraged, wouldn't you? Enraged and disheartened by the callous destruction of a labour of love, yes?"

"I suppose I would be."

"And can you imagine what might threaten _my_ masterpiece in such a way?"

There was, of course, only one answer:

"Bill Cipher," Dipper and Mabel replied, in perfect unison.

"Exactly. Unbound by the laws of reality, Bill's madness threatens to spread beyond the boundaries of this dimension and infect others in their turn. And sooner or later, the Weirdness he pours into the multiverse will reach my Earth." Nyarlathotep let out a long-suffering sigh. "And so, for the first time in eons, my masterpiece is in danger, and I must act to ensure that my greatest success, my greatest joy is not consumed by the folly of an impetuous child with no idea of the doom he has brought upon himself."

In spite of herself, Mabel actually found herself grinning: it was odd to think of Bill Cipher that way, given that he was apparently as old as the universe, but somehow, the description actually worked perfectly for the demented triangle. She could actually picture him sitting up on the throne at the heart of the Fearamid, a gigantic blonde brat in golden silk robes, frying human slaves with a magnifying glass and throwing a tantrum at every setback.

"So that's why you're helping us? You want to stop Bill from wrecking all your hard work."

"Elegantly surmised, Mabel."

"What about this doom you mentioned?" Dipper asked. "What's Bill brought down on himself?"

"Ah," chuckled Mr Carter, "to understand that, you have to understand _entropy."_

"What has entropy got to do with anything?"

"Everything. Believe me, everything. But enough about that. It's time we talked of your next port of call: you have attacks to plan on Bill, and you have a human population to rescue. It's time we spoke of where you have to send them all. It's time to talk about _The Cookie Jar…"_

* * *

 **A/N:** This chapter's soundtrack choice is **In Golden Light,** from _The Secret World_ soundtrack

 **Gsv girxphgvi glow gsv gifgs gsrh grnv**  
 **Yfg srh vmwtznv'h mlg hl vzhb gl wvurmv**  
 **Uli vevm ru Yroo Xrksvi nvvgh srh uvzih**  
 **Zazgslgs'h dzprmt hgroo wizdh mvzi**

Up next, the Cookie Jar! Any speculation on what it might be? Stay tuned, folks...


	36. The Cookie Jar

A/N: Welcome back, ladies and gents! We're racing through the madness now, and I hope I can uphold momentum with the end of A Special Kind of Isolation and the start of a new Gravity Falls story on the way. Yes, at some point in the not-too-distant future I will be writing a new Gravity Falls story, with a fresh, happier outlook that might actually make it akin to something you might actually see in the TV series.

No, really.

Stop laughing!

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter - feel free to furnish me with your theories, opinions, critiques and typo alerts. Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls, Cthulhu Mythos etc are not mine.

 **Also, from now on, I am including a soundtrack option or two at the end of each chapter. For added fun, I will be editing the previous chapters to include appropriate recommendations for music - one new chapter addition every day (in reverse order - 35, 34, etc).**

 **Feel free to review or PM me on what you think of my retroactive music choices!**

 **I can only thank Fantasy Fan 223 for inspiring me to take this step, and hope that my soundtrack choices live up to the action in each chapter.**

* * *

The Cookie Jar.

The Fly In Amber.

The Waiting Room.

The Zoo.

Ever since it had been willed into existence, the place had been given so many different names by both the Henchmaniacs and the unlucky prisoners stashed there, so many that it was almost impossible to list them all. Bill's favourite was the Cookie Jar, but no matter what name you gave it, in the end, there was only one adequate description of it.

A prison.

True, all the valued playthings had cells in which they could suffer, either alone or in company, but they hardly qualified as real prisons: quite apart from the fact that many spanned entire continents, these "cells" were just playgrounds where Bill Cipher could indulge his sadistic desires. No, in all of Bill Cipher's kingdoms, there was only one place that could truly be described as a prison in the truest sense of the word, a place where no _real_ torture took place; only endless confinement, isolation, and repression.

The truth was that even Bill's monstrous creativity had its limits: try as he might, there were some cases that beggared his imagination. No matter how many times he searched the pasts of his victims for new torture ideas and plumbed human history for inspiration, instances like these just couldn't be dealt with. Though he never would have admitted it, Bill couldn't torture literally everyone in the entire human race on a personalized basis – after all, that would have seemed too much work. He'd made a few hundred thousand exceptions and put them on display for all to see, but ultimately the vast majority of the human race was simply too dull, too inconspicuous, too beneath notice to be singled out for any specific punishment. In most cases, Bill just funnelled them into the wasteland and had a whale of a time watching them slowly being picked off in increasingly hideous ways by whatever the ruins of society could conjure up. And if they were entertaining enough (and they always were), they'd be brought back to life and allowed to do it all over again.

And yet there were some humans that were too boring for personalized torture, but still too important to simply be allowed to wander the wasteland. There was no benefit to watching them slowly starving to death, being eaten by monsters or dying of dysentery like all the other hapless refugees slowly being funnelled towards Cipheropolis. No, these captives would be more useful as a means of torturing _others_ : after all, his favoured playthings all had families, and they could be used to sharpen every minute of their suffering to nightmare proportions.

Parents, children, family members, friends, pets – as long as they could yield an emotional response from a certain audience, Bill kept them around, just _waiting_ for an excuse to have them brought out and tortured. Eventually, Bill realized that it was best that he had these special pawns stored together in a place where they couldn't cause trouble, and more importantly, where the Henchmaniacs wouldn't be tempted to attack them. As funny as it'd be to watch them being mulched up, he needed his store of prisoners unharmed… just so they were ripe and responsive when the pain finally began.

Thus was formed the Cookie Jar, a theoretically infinite pocket dimension built exclusively for hostages.

Of course, when the time came to explain this to the zodiac, Nyarlathotep was very careful not to mention the _names_ of those hostages.

* * *

"And?" Robbie demanded. "Bill has a prison. Big whoop. What does that have to do with anything? What good does that do any of us?"

Mr Carter offered a wry grin. "Quite a lot, as it happens. You see, the Cookie Jar is the only place in this dimension that will _always_ be perfectly safe. Like I said, Bill doesn't want his hostages getting hurt before it's time for them to be brought out and tortured in front of their families and friends, so every need is attended to: food, water, bedding, shelter, privacy, freedom from the Henchmaniacs, and all the comforts of home… well, give or take a few stressful deprivations just to make it clear it's a prison and not a holiday camp, but them's the breaks. Now, when I say 'perfectly safe,' I mean exactly that: not only are the Henchmaniacs forbidden from entering, but it's physically impossible for anyone to be hurt inside the Cookie Jar. Bill doesn't want anyone experiencing too much pain before it's their turn for the big family drama, so the prison makes sure that every nerve in the body remains whole and untouched, just so the torture is _that_ much more painful when the time comes."

There was a moment's silence, as he allowed this grim little titbit of information to sink in.

"So, if you needed a place to hide the leftovers of humanity and keep them safe from any reprisals Bill might plan during your little guerrilla warfare campaign, it'd be the Cookie Jar."

"So how are we supposed to get there?"

"Easy: I supply the coordinates, and you do the rest. It shouldn't be too hard to find a way in, not when Famine here can conjure portals into other playgrounds."

"And here I was, hoping that I wouldn't have to use that power again for at least a couple of days," Pacifica muttered bemusedly.

"And the fact that this Cookie Jar is still under Bill's control doesn't change anything?" asked Wendy. "You don't think he might get suspicious when new prisoners start showing up in the Jar at random? That's not going to prompt an investigation?"

Carter just laughed. "In a word, nope. You see, Bill's shot himself in the foot on this one: in creating a world of zero suffering but total suppression, he's managed to create the one place in his entire kingdom he can't stand to be in for very long. Just being there makes him grouchy. Plus, he hasn't found a proper use for his hostages yet. He hasn't checked inside the damn Cookie Jar for years now, and now that he's busy trying to find you people, he's going to be too busy hunting to pay much attention to a prison for harmless non-combatants."

"I dunno, it still sounds like a hell of a risk."

"That's all I've got," said Mr Carter with a shrug. "You're welcome to try finding space for all those people up in the Forge if you want to take a chance of them getting caught in the crossfire. You can even try carving some dimensionally transcendent space for them in the hotel if you want to keep everyone close by. I'm just here to render some small assistance where I can." He grinned, suddenly-sharklike teeth gleaming in the dim light.

"There's one other thing we can try," said Grunkle Stan. "Ford's scythe cut through the tethers that were holding the Forge in place; what if we tried the same thing with the Cookie Jar? I mean, if we're that worried about Bill blowing the lid off this scheme, why don't we just steal the whole thing and hide it somewhere he won't think to look? If he's really that distracted, he probably won't even notice it's gone until it's too late."

"You're welcome to try that, of course. As I said, I'm just here to help."

All eyes turned in Dipper and Mabel's direction, clearly looking to them for answers. Suddenly realizing that they were back in the leadership role all of a sudden, the two of them hastily adjourned to a distance for a whispered conference – during which, Dipper got so agitated that he ended up accidentally transforming into an anteater and needed a full minute to calm down before he could return to human form again. Eventually, after much discussion, they returned to the group.

"Okay," said Dipper, shakily. "We stick to the original plan: once we're ready to start, we split up into two squads. Squad 1 goes out and attacks one of Bill's playgrounds, someplace the Henchmaniacs like to visit… but it also has to be far away from any of the locals, so they won't get hurt if the fight gets out of control and they won't be punished if and when Bill hears of it."

"I know just the place," said Mr Carter. "There's a little hangout on the edge of the Necrotic Abyss, this divey bar called the Mortuary. It's well out of the way and staffed exclusively by zombies – it's technically _built_ from them, if you must know. Plus, it's a favourite of Lava Lamp and Hectorgon: they like to drop in after a hard day's massacre for a few cold ones."

"Question is, how do we get there?"

" **The Stanmobile II,"** intoned Grunkle Ford.

"Excuse me?"

"He means the chariot," said Grunkle Stan helpfully. "It can travel between playgrounds, and there's enough room for passengers."

" **No need for passengers. The smaller flocks follow the great birds to battle. Follow close, and the chariot will lead us there."**

"Great, great. So we either ambush the Henchmaniacs that are already at this Mortuary place, or we lure them in by blowing it up. Whatever we do, we're going to need all our best heavy hitters for this one: um… Wendy, obviously. The Society can join in as well if she's coming along. Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford as well. Robbie, the place is probably jam-packed with dead bodies, so you're along for the ride as well. And, uh…" He took a deep breath. "And I'll lead the squad."

He smiled, clearly trying not to look terrified and failing miserably.

"What about the rest of us, dude?" asked Soos.

"That's where squad 2 comes in," said Mabel. "The rest of us stay here in Cipheropolis and evacuate everyone to the Cookie Jar. Pacifica, you're going to be opening the portal to the Cookie Jar; Soos, you can't be hurt if anyone gets nasty, so you lead the crowds; we're also gonna need crowd control, so we're going to have to borrow the refugees for this. Gideon, if you know any tricks that can calm people down, that'll help as well. And, uh, Old Man McGucket… we're going to need some backup just in case. Is there any way you can make the rust thralls look a little less scary?"

"I think I can manage that. You'll have to give me a few ideas, though."

"No problem. And I'll lead squad 2."

Dipper cleared his throat. "Once that's done, we plan out the next phase, maybe see if we can try towing the Cookie Jar someplace safe."

"There's just one problem in all of this."

"What's that, Gideon?"

"The business of calming people down. I don't know any telepathic techniques that can calm down an entire city, and I'm pretty sure y'all don't either."

"Well, like I said, we do this when we're ready. We can always find time for training. Er, not too much time of course, just… Uh…" Dipper briefly floundered for a moment. "Mr Carter, is Bill likely to stage an attack in the next few days? I mean, on us or any human settlements."

"According to my sources, Bill is currently in the middle of one of the biggest emotional crises seen outside the boundaries of a TARDIS, and probably won't be out looking for you anytime soon. If you're planning on spending a little bit more time refining your powers, I wouldn't take _too_ much time: this little breakdown of his won't last forever, after all. I'd give it perhaps five days before he starts putting the pieces back together again."

"Alright then!" said Mabel, briskly. "We've got five days to train up, then. Gideon, focus on using your telepathy to keep people calm, communicating with entire cities full of people. Pacifica, if you can conjure a portal away from the edge of the playground for a change. Robbie, see how many zombies you can control at once and then triple that number. Wendy, you're going to need some time to get the hang of using a sword and a horse. Soos… er…."

"Find something to do other than come back from the dead?"

"Yeah, that."

"Once again," said Mr Carter, "I stand ready to offer assistance in these matters. If anyone's having trouble thinking of ways to improve their powers, I can offer a number of suggestions. Just don't expect them to be particularly easy ideas to put into practice." Once again, his grin turned sharklike. "Enjoy your training sessions, everybody! Your very lives may depend on them!"

"Aw, dude, I gotta find some really awesome montage music for this…"

* * *

For the next five days, there was nothing for the zodiac to do but work, nothing to do but train and drill and exercise every last power they'd gained. Some of them worked out at the hotel, claiming the bigger rooms as improvised gymnasiums and gaining massive audiences in the process; some took to the streets of Cipheropolis, using the rooftops and back alleys as their training grounds; a few even exercised outside the city walls, where their powers would do the least damage; and those who felt themselves too alien or unusual to practice in the view of others sequestered themselves in the depths of the Forge.

Finding a place for himself in the deserts just beyond the reach of the city, Dipper pushed his shapeshifting to the absolute limit: he explored his potential for the elements, becoming at first a roaring inferno consuming all fuel within range, then a deluge of water shaped by his will, then an intangible vortex of gale-force winds, then a solid mass of rock and metal bearing down on his imagined opponents with tectonic inevitability. Then he was a beam of light, untouchable and moving faster than the human eye could travel; a shadow creeping up behind his target; a puff of smoke racing through its lungs; a growth of razor-sharp vines strangling it from the inside out...

At the hotel ballroom, Mabel unleashed the power of time on anything that could work as a practice dummy: she practiced stopping time by bouncing a tennis ball against the ceiling, she rewound a wilted flower back into full bloom, and at the encouragement of the onlookers she broke sheet glass and put it back together again. With some assistance from some enthusiastic archers among the refugees, she learned how to enhance the speed of projectiles in motion, something that would hopefully come in handy to the gunners in their little army. She even got the hang of stepping just outside of time, where she could move at impossible speed – or what _looked_ like impossible speed to everyone else. For an encore, she summoned Sunshine and proved she could do all of this while on horseback.

Soos repeatedly threw himself off the hotel roof, trying to see how quickly he could respawn and where he'd eventually materialize.

In between marathon races across the rooftops of Cipheropolis, Wendy armed herself with her new flaming War Sword and her axe and set to work on an improvised test dummy made from sturdy oak beams. Then, after she'd swept up the disintegrated remains of said test dummy, she moved onto a solid granite block. By the time she'd finally gotten around to scraping off the globs of molten rock that had accumulated on her clothing, she was effective enough to use both weapons on horseback – much to the delight of Khan.

Pacifica floated high above the dunes outside of town, slowly working at her ability to open portals, gradually easing them away from the edge of the playground and into its centre. She even succeeded in reaching the Cookie Jar from time to time, not that she ever strayed inside the portals, of course: the idea a prison within a prison didn't exactly appeal to her, and besides, the place didn't look like much to write home about. When she wasn't doing this, she was seeing just how far she could push her other abilities, especially her telekinesis: by now, she was strong enough to juggle boulders that had to weigh tons at the very last, but how much could she actually do with the additional power boost her necklace gave her? How much would she be able to accomplish if she just kept pushing herself? A sandstorm? A landslide? A meteor shower? Could she uproot entire cities if she put her mind to it?

With Jheselbraum advising him from afar, Gideon cast his mind out across Cipheropolis like a net, taking in as many fevered psyches as he could hold without straining himself. Bit by bit, he expanded his reach – until by day five, he could hear the whispering thoughts of an entire city echoing inside his skull and somehow withstand it all. In his sleep, he remained in contact with the Oracle, conducting cryptic auguries of the future, trying to work out possible courses of action from the vague glimpses he could divine. And when he wasn't expanding his reach or dabbling in precognition, he was diversifying his abilities: with the help of volunteers from the refugee populace, he practiced altering emotional states in as gentle a way as possible, inducing happiness, mirth, fear, and most important of all, serenity. With a little effort and plenty of coaching from Jheselbraum, he was even able to knock them out for a while. Sometimes he pushed himself too far: sometimes, he cast his net too wide or used too much power while trying to influence emotions, and ended up blacking out. But that was okay: Jheselbraum was always there to shield his mind from the backlash, just as Amanda was always there to catch him when he fell.

Deep within the Forge, the Toymaker busied himself with the new requests from below, modifying the rust thralls until they matched Mabel's specifications. All the while, his biomechanoid servitors scoured the facility, looking for the alarms and beacons that would alert Bill to any attempts to leave the Forge – ready to dismantle anything that might keep the Toymaker indoors. Any mechanisms left over from the surgery or the search would be repurposed for use in building a signal scrambler, one that might hopefully be enough to help him remove the sensors from his body. But all that paled into insignificance into the hardest job of all: remembering who he was. Ford, Dipper, Mabel and the others had all given him anecdotes of their time together in the hopes of restoring parts of his memory, and though the stories sounded vaguely familiar, he couldn't quite imagine himself as the man they said he was. And no matter how many times he said it to himself, Fiddleford McGucket just didn't sound like his own name.

Robbie scoured the city for corpses, touring the graveyards, plague pits, disreputable butchers' shops, and Soos' practice grounds, raising the dead and gathering them into his growing zombie horde. Hour by hour, he tested the limits of how many zombies he could control at once: first five hundred, then a thousand, then two thousand, until at last he had an army of twenty-five hundred strong. Once he'd found a suitable place outside of town where none of the wall sentries could see him, he began assembling the bodies, gathering them into a giant agglomeration of rotting flesh…

In the darkened halls of the Forge, Stan and Ford practiced as best as they could. After all, where else could two demigods with the power of death exercise their powers without hurting anybody? Stan busied himself with his shadowboxing routine, throwing punches that could level skyscrapers at astronomical speeds; and Ford, his mind full of nightmares and necrotic equations and shadows of the man he once was, turned the full force of entropy on a single titanium gear and watched it slowly erode away into useless scrap metal.

Even the refugees trained, slowly mastering their stolen alien weaponry, blasting away at improvised targets in the hotel basement and charging through ersatz obstacles courses – all under the watchful eye of Amanda and Gideon.

And through it all, Mr Carter strolled from session to session, appearing just long enough to offer cryptic suggestions to the zodiac and then vanishing just as quickly.

"Abstracts, little shoggoth, always strive for abstracts! You'll need to try more esoteric shapes if you'll want to match wits with the Henchmaniacs. You've already _seen_ them – and that's enough for a shapeshifter; you just need to learn how to _use_ them."

"Have you ever considered that you might need to use your powers on living beings, Mabel? You'll require human test subjects to make it work… and you already have one on hand."

"Dying isn't the only thing you can do, Soos. Perhaps you've heard the saying, 'what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger?' Well, it's not strictly accurate in your case, so what you need to do is focus on _rebuilding."_

"Remember that telepathic radar you developed, Pacifica? You haven't made much use of it in the last few months – after all, why would you? But if you put your mind to it, you can find anything in the area. Put that together with your telekinesis, and you wouldn't even have to _see_ something to kill…"

"Robbie, have you ever considered that you're not limited to reanimating? I mean, the corpses you first acquired from the City of the Dead weren't really dead: they were just lumps of lifeless matter, _made_ dead from the very beginning. If you can animate them, what makes you think you can't animate… other things?"

"Don't mind if the uninitiated look at you differently, by the way; power changes everyone, and you fine folk more than most. As your abilities grow in strength, the Weirdness within you begins to express itself in the visual spectrum…"

And when he wasn't doing that, he was on the phone, always talking, always deep in conversation with one mysterious caller after another…

* * *

"Axolotl! Good to hear from you again. How's tricks?"

"Well, it so happens that I'm almost at the rendezvous point. Funny thing, though, Bill Cipher seems to have called off the search entirely by now. In fact, from what little I've been able to see of things, he seems to have left most of the Henchmaniacs to their own devices. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"Me? Not at all. Fortuitous, though, isn't it?"

"Very. Are the members of the zodiac all assembled in Cipheropolis?"

"All assembled and prepared for what must happen next. They're still a little confused and more than a bit eccentric, but they'll be ready to receive your orders the moment you arrive on the scene: whatever you want, they're gung-ho for it."

"Eccentricity's kind of expected by now. As long as the zodiac's ready, willing and able to help me stop Bill once and for all, I'm okay with it."

"Believe me, they're able."

"And they're expecting me?"

"Of course. I told them everything they needed to know – minus all those embarrassing details you wouldn't want them hearing until after Bill's gone bye-bye."

"Okay. Where am I due to meet them?"

"Just inside the gates of Cipheropolis, in just under three hours' time. I'll make sure they're ready for you."

"Alright then. Um… thank you, Nyarlathotep."

"Think nothing of it, Axolotl. Just doing my bit for the safety of the multiverse."

* * *

The morning of the mission arrived all too soon, dawning cold and swift and brutally, bringing with it a touch of frost that Cipheropolis probably hadn't seen in years. Even the desert sands seemed to glisten with tiny shards of ice. Mabel was pretty sure this qualified as a portent of doom, but then again, the apocalypse had already come and gone: portents of doom honestly didn't mean much anymore.

Neither Dipper nor Mabel had slept a wink the night before, both of them having spent the last few hours lying wide awake in their respective beds and staring at the ceiling before finally giving up and heading down to the foyer to watch _Ghost Harassers_ on one of the battered old TV sets they'd managed to salvage. What with everything that had happened in the last few months, it seemed almost funny to be watching DVDs about ghosts, but then it wasn't as if there was anything better to do; the fact that they still hadn't found any copies of _Ducktective_ around the bazaar didn't help.

"Look on the bright side," said Mabel. "Once we've evacuated everyone, we'll be able to help ourselves to whatever's left in the marketplace."

Now, though, it seemed really difficult to put that same self-assurance into practice. After only a few short days together, Dipper and Mabel were being separated again, and this time they were both leading missions that could turn very ugly if something went wrong. By the time the sun began creeping over the edge of the skyline, the two of them were so nervous that they couldn't even voice their own fear: they could only sit there on the couch, staring blankly at the screen, hand in hand and almost too afraid to let go.

Eventually, the sounds of people beginning to stir in the rooms above them drove the two out of the foyer and back to their room to prepare for the day ahead. Dipper donned his battered cap once again, securing it to his head by a dozen hooked tendrils conjured from his scalp, and hastily put himself through a few last-minute warmups – shifting from osprey to vampire bat and back again.

Mabel, on the other hand, dressed to impress and tried to look brimful of confidence. In the end, she stood before her dressing table in a gleaming white sweater adorned with a golden shooting star, a pristine white skirt, a pair of white leather shoes, her grappling hook holster, and her crown. Maybe it was just the tiara glittering on her forehead, but the whole ensemble seemed a lot more impressive than it had looked sitting in the drawers; looking at herself in the mirror, she actually thought she looked… almost _regal_.

Well, Waddles certainly seemed impressed, even if he was still a bit gloomy over being left in the hotel for this mission.

Dipper gave her a funny look as Mabel finished tying her shoelaces. "Where did you get all those white clothes from?" he asked suspiciously.

"I… I don't remember. I think I might have picked them up at the markets the other day."

 _Either that or being a Horseperson of the Apocalypse is having a weird effect on my wardrobe. Jeez, I hope it's only when we're heading into battle: I'd hate to spend the rest of my life wearing white._

Once they were done with preparations, they headed downstairs to the foyer once again to meet with the rest of the zodiac, all of whom were dressed and ready for battle… or as near to properly dressed as they could be, under the circumstances. Needless to say, for an army of liberators, they did _not_ look the part: Soos wore only his work clothes and cap; Robbie had shelled out a few tokens for some better-fitting gear, but he was still clearly just a blind kid in street clothes; Gideon was still dressed in the same tattered wasteland rags he'd worn for the last few months, and the same went for most of the refugees _and_ the Society; Dipper hadn't bothered to take on any of his more fearsome shapes yet; and even Grunkle Stan – the second half of the Death Duo – was still dressed in his Mr Mystery outfit.

"What can I say?" he'd said with a laugh. "Black goes well with the job _and_ the mission. Your friend up there knows what I'm talking about, am I right?"

Pacifica smiled in spite of herself. "Believe it or not, I honestly don't know how I got this dress in my wardrobe… but after months of wearing nothing but dirty doll's clothes, I'm honestly not complaining."

Right now, the rebellious Northwest was clad in a magnificent black silk dress brocaded with arcane designs in gleaming silver thread, along with a pair of opera gloves tipped with gauntlets of solid platinum, and even a pair of fashionable black high heels adorned with tiny silver wings. It looked about as practical as jumping off a cliff, but then again, Pacifica was a doll armed with telekinetic magic, a power-enhancing talisman, and one of the Horses of the Apocalypse; practicality didn't really apply to her ensemble anymore.

All in all, it looked as though the Horsemen/Horsepeople/Perfect Idiots were the only members of the team who looked as though they were dressing to impress: Grunkle Ford was still dressed in his ominous black robe, his arms and legs seeming to vanish beneath its ethereal drapery; Mabel had her crown and white clothes; even Wendy, who wasn't exactly a fashionista at the best of times, had somehow managed to acquire a set of cured leather armour from one of the local markets – and as simple as it was, there was no denying it was an impressive sight, especially since the material itself was tinted a deep, almost earthy shade of crimson.

As soon as they'd all gathered, Dipper took centre stage once again. "Alright everyone," he said, clearly trying to sound more confident than he felt. "I think we're about as ready as we ever will be. You know the mission, and you know the plans. Does anyone have anything they want to say about this before we get moving?"

Gideon held up a hand. "I've actually been making some predictions for the future and… well, they're still a little hazy, but-"

"We're all gonna die," finished Stan, grinning wickedly.

A ripple of nervous laughter echoed through the crowd, neatly breaking the tension that had been building up for the last five days.

"Uh, no. I can actually confirm that you won't be attacking an empty building: there definitely will be at least one Henchmaniac there, maybe two if Bill's mood is as bad as I think it is. They'll have their own retinue of guards – Eyebats and a few other creepy-crawly types – so it'll be a pretty crowded bar. And there's also the local staff to think about, so…" He swallowed nervously. "Just a heads up for y'all."

"Thanks for the heads up; we'll be ready for them. Um, anyone else?"

Silence. After all, they were headed into uncharted waters: nobody had any pithy lines at hand, not when everyone was busy worrying about what might happen next.

"Alright then, let's get going: attackers, you're with me; evacuators, you're with Mabel. We'll see you all again soon. Um, good luck."

As the attackers began slowly filing out of the entrance hall, Mabel grabbed Dipper by the shoulder; suddenly, seeing him leave was too much for her to bear, and from the look of dawning anxiety on his face, she could tell he felt the same way.

"Stay safe, okay?" she whispered.

"Well, _safe_ might be asking a bit much," Dipper squeaked.

"Same goes for me, really. You nervous?"

"It's taking everything in me not to transform into a cast-iron safe right now. How about you?"

"I'm just about to go into orbit over here. One loud noise, and I'll have booster rockets on my feet."

"Well… I mean, hopefully it won't be too bad. It's only people, right?"

"It's not the people I'm worrying about," said Mabel, only half-joking. "I've already taken on a Henchmaniac _and_ an entire army. It's working with Gideon that's got me worried."

"Truth be told, I'm in the same boat: I've taken on giant bloodsucking blob, but now I've gotta team up with Wendy again." A rather large bead of sweat rolled past Dipper's left eye. "I mean, we haven't even spoken to each other since I remembered who I was, and… things are still a little tense."

"You'll be fine, Dipper. Believe me, she still likes you."

"How can you tell?"

"She isn't giving you the 'Gideon-I'm-gonna-kill-you' look anymore."

"Oh."

There was a pause, as they realized that the attacker team was waiting for Dipper.

"Good luck, Mabel."

"You too, bro-bro."

At last, they parted, and Dipper began the long slow march towards the open doors of the hotel, into the street. There, in the gaping space that only the earliest hours of the morning could provide, the team readied themselves for departure: Grunkle Stan summoned up the Stanmobile Chariot, and made space for Robbie in the backseat; Grunkle Ford hovered into the air, propelled by the power of his own will; Wendy clambered onto Khan's back, the fiery horse's hoofs already beginning to ascend as she settled into the saddle; and Dipper grew, his body erupting outward into a colossal set of wings and a gargantuan body large enough for the Society to clamber aboard. In that moment, he was a dragon, a Roc, a monster that had only been seen in the deepest caverns beneath Gravity Falls up until now – and it was with this body that he would lead the charge.

With an almighty roar, Dipper took to the air with one great flap of his enormous wings, and the rest of the team followed, galloping and floating and rolling into the sky – soon vanishing behind the buildings as they sped away from Cipheropolis.

A moment later, there was a deafening rumble from just outside the city walls, as Robbie summoned up the corpses that had been waiting for him and settled in behind the canopy of his new war body. From here, the journey would be slightly slower in order to accommodate the lumbering giant, but not by much – for Robbie's creations grew faster every day.

For a few minutes afterwards, the air was filled with the thud of titanic footsteps shaking the ground and unearthly howls rending the sky… but as the team reached the edge of the playground, the sounds faded away, until Mabel could hear them no longer.

And in the terrible silence that followed, she turned to her own team and said, "Alright guys. Let's get going. We've got a city to evacuate…"

* * *

"Nyarlathotep? Nyarlathotep, why aren't you answering?! You said that the members of the zodiac were going to meet me inside the gates, but about half of them just flew past me! What the hell is going on in there, and why haven't the others shown up yet? For the love of Shub-Niggurath, _pick up the phone!_

And what is all that noise going on back there? I swear, it sounds like you've got the whole town in uprising!

Nyalathotep, are you even checking your inbox anymore?

…Nyarlathotep?

…oh _shit…"_

* * *

It all began with a message.

The denizens of Cipheropolis were only just emerging from their beds when they heard the words echoing across the city, though in truth they didn't hear them at all: the message simply _inserted_ itself into their minds, editing itself into one skull after another as it rippled out across the homes and flophouses of the desert slums. Beggars lying slumped in alleyways looked up as it rolled across them; gangsters in the great stalagmite-shaped towers on the horizon looked up from their ludicrously expensive meals in sudden anger at the non-existent sound; street thugs turned away from the bloody remains of their last victims to hear it; even the lowliest of mutants scraping out a living in the sewers gurgled in confusion as the ethereal words made themselves known inside their heads.

 _All citizens must depart for the city gates immediately. Salvation is at hand: you no longer have to live in Bill Cipher's kingdom. Heed our call and we can guarantee your safety. Head to the gates, and we can show you the way…_

Five minutes later, the message repeated itself, this time more insistently.

By now, the citizens of Cipheropolis were a cynical bunch: even the most pampered of all the gangland aristocracy wouldn't have hesitated to look gift horses in the mouth, especially given that the Henchmaniacs were known to occasionally visit the town and prank the inhabitants. And there was still that ugly metal shape in the sky to worry about: for all they knew, this was some terrible new joke of Bill's, and the entire thing would drop on them like a comet the moment they opened their doors.

But in the end, the people found themselves filing out anyway: many were so downtrodden that the possibility of escape was tantalizing enough to outweigh the risk of danger. In the case of those who weren't so easily convinced, something in the message made it impossible to resist, imbued them with so much curiosity that many left their homes just to see what all the fuss was really about. Whatever the case, people departed en mass: families travelled together, babies in arms; soldiers left their posts without even bothering to holster their guns; nightshift workers enjoying a morning sleep headed out in their pyjamas. In the end, only a few remained behind: those who couldn't walk on their own and couldn't be assisted, and those who were too stubborn or too well-indoctrinated to accept the message.

Since nobody was stopping to pack their belongings or lock their doors, it didn't take long for the first few thousand citizens to begin assembling in Bleak Plaza, just a mile from the gates. Driven by the message and the inexplicable impulses that had followed with it, many would have carried straight on to the gates themselves – except for the fact that they'd seen the figures watching them from nearby.

Hovering directly over their heads were two impossible figures: the first, mounted on the back of a horse with coat so bright it seemed to outshine the sun itself, looked almost uncannily like a human child of about thirteen: dressed all in white, every movement she made left a trail of flickering afterimages in the air; at times, her face seemed multifaceted, as if seen through a crystal – and onlookers swore that each facet seemed to show her at a different age; and when she looked at the crowd with those strange luminous blue eyes, pocked watches began running in reverse, accelerated ahead of real time or broke down altogether. Most disturbing of all was her crown, for as magnificent as it was, people couldn't help feel as though, for every second they looked at it, thousands of tiny biting insects were crawling across their skin.

The second, this one riding a midnight-black horse with eyes that gleamed like polished gemstones, was no bigger than a doll – and indeed, as eagle-eyed watchers noted, she actually seemed to have the porcelain skin, toylike clothing and delicately sculpted features of a doll as well. And as she stared down at them, the silver pendant at her neck seemed to glow in the morning sun, filling the crowd with the strangest feeling that they had nothing of worth in all the world, that they were alone and due to starve at any minute.

As for the two figures lurking below them, they didn't look any better. Even if the kid dressed all in rags hadn't been emaciated to the brink of starvation, there was something clearly wrong with him: his balding head seemed too big for his body, and the air around him seemed to shimmer with intangible waves of energy – some among the crowd whispering they could feel cold hands creeping across their thoughts. And the fat man in the greasy question mark t-shirt smelled like death, his body surrounded by a thick, oozing miasma of freshly-turned earth and rotting flesh, and as he stepped closer, a few onlookers swore that the shadow he cast seemed to belong to over a hundred people – each of them identical to him.

There was a pause, as the growing crowd took in the four horrifying figures and the army slowly gathering on the walls nearby.

Then, the first of the two riders spoke. "Um, okay everyone," she said loudly. "There's no need to stand around all distracted: we're opening a portal right at the city gates. So, just walk straight through it, and everything'll be okay."

Several extremely confused seconds went by in silence.

"Do you think they can hear me, or should I get a little closer?"

"They can hear you just fine, Mabel," said the doll on horseback.

"Then why aren't they moving?"

"Well, I could be wrong, but I _think_ they're scared of us."

"…why? Aside from the horses, we're perfectly normal!"

There was a rumble of confusion from below; a moment later, someone in the crowd threw a rock at the first rider, and though it missed her by a good five feet, it definitely surprised her.

"What was _that_ for?! Didn't you hear me? We are going to be opening a portal just inside the city gates! This is your chance to get out of here! Why are you passing this up _now?"_

"Uh, Mabel?" the skinny kid called out. "Just thought you ought to know: I've taken a peek through their senses, and I think the Weirdness we've absorbed is starting to mess with their perceptions of reality – kind of an automatic defence mechanism, I think."

"In other words, we look like Henchmaniacs," the second rider sighed. "And we've scared the crap out of them."

Another missile shot from the crowd – this time a hatchet. This time, however, the first rider's eyes glowed, and suddenly the hatchet seemed to change shape in mid-air: one minute it was a throwing axe; then it was a large wooden log and a steel ingot; then it was a tree limb and a lump of unrefined rock soaring through the sky… and then both items stopped in mid-air.

"Do you think they can even understand us, or is this Weirdness field screwing that up as well?"

The second rider shook her head irritably, and sent the frozen components clattering to the ground with a wave of her hand. "I'm pretty sure they can understand everything we say. It's just that they don't trust us."

"Oh, dude, let me try getting through to them; I've kinda got a way with people, y'know?" The fat man stepped forward, a huge smile on his face. "Now, guys, I know everyone's a little bit weirded out, but-"

An earsplitting rattle of gunfire tore through the air. In the chaos that followed, the AK-47 was hastily wrestled out of the assailant's hands by a gaggle of terrified citizens who'd rather not imagine what the strangers would do to them if they continued resisting, but by then, the fat man was already slumped to the ground in a spreading pool of blood.

A moment later, a completely-identical fat man sprinted out from the nearest alleyway and skidded to a halt next to the body. "Dude," he sighed. "That really hurt."

"Okay, Gideon," the second rider called out. "Let's have some nice calm impulses down there, okay? We've got a lot of very panicky people piling up and we need to get them to cool down ASAP, so _nice, calming impulses,_ please?"

 _Please proceed to the gates, everyone. You will not be harmed. I repeat, you will not be harmed…_

And then, just as people were beginning to continue down the street towards the gates, there was another spate of gunfire – this one fired straight up into the air. Suddenly, the calming flow of thoughts pouring across the cobblestones stopped, and all eyes were focussed on the source of the noise.

Advancing down the street towards the waiting quartet and their ragged army was a vast mob of yellow-robed figures, each of them cowled and dressed in triangle-shaped masks of burnished brass… and all of them were armed. From the looks of things, about half the city's guns had ended up in their possession, and even those who weren't equipped an assault rifle or a shotgun had a sidearm at hand alongside their machetes or cudgels. Even the members of the audience who hadn't been brave or foolhardy enough to get within reach of the great pyramid at the heart of the city couldn't fail to recognize the new arrivals: this was the Cult of Cipher, the priests, acolytes and most fervent worshippers at the pyramid shrine built in the rotten heart of the city, those who had broken after years of torment and accepted Bill Cipher as the one true god.

These were the Cipherites.

They'd even brought their high priest with them, a crooked figure almost bent double under the weight of the gold jewellery draped around his neck and the pyramid-shaped mitre crowning his skull.

"These people aren't going anywhere," the high priest thundered. "These are the chattel of the great Bill Cipher! Only he can decide where his flock goes! Only he allows them slavery or liberation! Only _he_ gives command to the people of this city! You will allow these people to turn back, or be annihilated in the wrathful fire of the faithful!"

"Is this guy _serious?"_ the first rider demanded. "A girl who can stop time, a telekinetic doll, a psychic, and a guy who literally just came back from the dead, a couple of hundred armed refugees, and he thinks he can just wipe us out?"

"Crazy, I know," said the second. "How many people do you think are in this gang of lunatics anyway?"

"I'm not reading more than a hundred and eighty," said the skinny kid.

"A hundred and eighty of these people versus _us_ – plus everyone in this city who's on our side so far? Are they _trying_ to get themselves killed?"

"I think they might have reinforcements on the way."

"Yeah, well we can deal with them any day of the- wait, what's that sound?"

Marching down another street towards the plaza was another heavily-armed gang; unlike the cultists, this gang looked to be made up almost entirely of civilians armed with pitchforks and Kalashnikovs – except for the first rank, who were equipped with nothing but gleaming silver staves terminating in double-pronged heads like the tines of a tuning fork. And standing at the head of the mob was a strange figure dressed in a monkish grey habit; bald, with skin as pale as marble and eyes a clouded, opaque grey, he held aloft a staff of his own – this one tipped with a massive transparent gemstone.

"Oh damn," muttered the skinny kid. "I forgot about them."

"Dude, who are they?"

"Well, they're worshippers of the feller at the front is a Prior, a telekinetic missionary; he was giving sermons down at Preacher's Pass when I got here. I hoped he'd been killed in that big riot me and Wendy set off a few days ago, and when the sermons closed down after that, I thought we didn't have anything to worry about… but I guess he'd just gone underground."

"But who are the Ori, dude?"

"Hallowed are the Ori!" boomed the Prior.

"HALLOWED ARE THE ORI," echoed the mob behind him.

"Hallowed are their servants! Blessed be those who accept the truth of Origin! Cursed be those who would obscure the truth of the universe from us! The Ori will not allow those who hunger for justice and enlightenment to be separated from them, nor will they permit them to suffer under the yoke of the false god Bill Cipher!"

"Seriously," said the Cipherite high priest, "who the _fuck_ are the Ori?"

By way of explanation, the Prior slammed his staff down on the ground, sending a telekinetic shockwave roaring across the plaza and toppling most of the first three ranks of Cipherites to the ground.

As soon as the Cipherites clambered to their feet, they took aim and opened fire on anything that remotely looked like an enemy, without much success; bullets simply ricocheted off the Prior and bypassed the doll on horseback entirely; anything that got close to the first rider seemed to unmake itself in mid-air, dissembling itself into nothingness; the skinny kid just took cover.

However, the fat man intercepted every single shot aimed in his direction, his body rocking back on his heels as bullets hammered into his arms, legs, belly and face. And yet this time, he didn't fall: every single bullet that struck him sank partway into his flesh, then clattered out in a hail of flattened shells.

"Aw, dude, Mr Carter was right!" the fat man whooped. He winced, gingerly massaging his battered face. "Still hurts though."

At this point, someone among the Cipherites lobbed a grenade across the plaza, and though the Prior soaked up the explosion with a wave of his hand, the onlookers were instantly whipped into a panic – a panic that only grew as reinforcements began lining up: four hundred fresh Cipherites, and almost twice as many Ori worshippers, this time accompanied by at least three more Priors.

"Okay," said the first rider. "No more playing around! Old Man McGucket, it's time you sent in the troops. Gideon, you're up: get rid of these maniacs before they hurt someone!"

Without a moment's hesitation, the skinny kid shouted an order to the gunmen on the walls; a moment later, the entire platoon erupted into a dazzling haze of light and colour, peppering the Cipherites and the Ori worshippers alike with a hail of devastating energy blasts, slicing through their ranks like a blowtorch through butter. However, nothing could penetrate the Priors' telekinetic shields, and their psychic blasts sent the ragged army crashing to the ground in droves.

Just as it looked as though the two factions were about to press their advantage, there was a series of bright flashes from the ugly metal shape in the sky; moments later, three huge pods slammed into the street like meteorites, each one instantly disgorging a small army of…

"RUST THRALLS!" someone screamed.

Panic set in: suddenly, everyone was fleeing in all directions, the terror spreading across the plaza until it consumed just about everyone not already embroiled in the fighting, to the point that even the new arrivals streaming in from the other parts of the city started running. Meanwhile, the three-cornered carnage was still unfolding, with the Cipherites pounding both sides with automatic gunfire, the Ori followers swamping their foes with wave after wave of badly-armed citizens while the Priors bombarded the enemy from afar, and the combined forces of the gunmen, the rust thralls and the four weirdos attacking with every single strategy and power at hand.

Eventually, the first rider yelled, "Okay, this isn't working out. Gideon, we're going to need more calming impulses before someone gets trampled! Pacifica, is the portal open?"

"It is now."

"Great! Soos, Gideon, lead the way for them: make sure they get to the portal and make sure they're safe. Lots and lots of calm now!"

"What about you and Pacifica?"

By way of an answer, the doll on horseback waved a hand and sent a parked carriage rocketing down the street to land with a bone-splintering crunch in the middle of the Ori ranks, flatting one of the Priors.

"We'll handle this," said the first rider, grimly.

"The power of the Ori cannot be denied!" the nearest Prior thundered. "Enlightenment shall burn away all impurity, until only their wisdom remains! Hallowed are the Ori! Hallowed are their followers-"

There was a muffled _phut_ from somewhere nearby. A split-second later, a double-headed grapnel on the end of an improbably lengthy cable shot through the air, clawed hooks wrapping themselves around the Prior at a speed too great for even his powers to stop; to the eyes of onlookers, it almost seemed as if something was actually _accelerating_ it through time. Whatever the case, it wound itself across the Prior from head to toe… and then, as the cable abruptly cut short, a flicker of enchantment built into the hook sent the captured Prior soaring across the horizon, to land with a loud, wet thud some distance away.

"GRAPPLING HOOK!" said the first rider triumphantly.

And the rest, thanks to the sudden influx of calming impulses, was all a blur.

* * *

To Axolotl, the next fifteen minutes were nothing short of bewildering. One minute he was standing alone by the city gate, wondering what the hell was going on; the next thing he knew, a _portal_ opened right behind him and a solid wall of people came marching down the road towards it. Surprised as he was, he didn't move until it was almost too late; he only narrowly avoided being swept up in the crowd as it thundered into the portal.

There had to be over a hundred thousand people in this one queue alone, and thousand more flocking into line behind them, and all of them were headed straight for the portal and whatever lay beyond. Axolotl tried to ask them where they thought they were going and what had inspired them to do so, but none of them seemed in the mood to listen; they seemed to be under the influence of some immensely powerful psychic field. Had he possessed the full scope of his powers, the Axolotl would have been able to easily dispel such influence even in Tyler Cutebiker's spindly form, but with Bill Cipher still repressing his magic in this world, all he could do was look on helplessly.

Even more befuddling was the sight of the two harried looking figures hurrying alongside the crowd: despite the distance, there was no mistaking Soos Ramirez and Gideon Gleeful, both of them clearly empowered by the Weirdness of the playgrounds they'd been imprisoned in. Every now and again, one of the Cipherites following them would try and get a bead on them – or else close quarters and attack head on – only to be brought up short by the duo's new powers: either Soos would soak up every single bullet and plough into his assailants at high speed, or Gideon would wave a hand and knock the offending Cipherite unconscious with a jolt of psychic energy.

Once he was certain that the field was relatively clear of opponents, Axolotl hurried over to them. "What's happening?" he asked. "I thought we were-"

"Mayor Cutebiker, is that you?" Soos hollered. "Wow, dude, I didn't think you'd make it this far! Great to see you again!"

"What?"

"No time to talk, dude! You need to get into the portal, Mr Mayor, you'll be safer in there!"

"But-"

Gideon let out a snarl of exasperation. "Soos, he isn't listening! Just carry him if you have to!"

And then to Axolotl's shock, Soos ducked down and scooped up his borrowed form in a fireman's lift, hoisting Tyler's body high over his head like a wrestler. Not accustomed to being manhandled like this even while inhabiting a mortal vessel, Axolotl could only let out an undignified squeak of surprise as Soos carried him down the street towards the vast glowing portal covering the gates.

It wasn't until he was less than a few dozen yards from the portal that he managed to recover enough to shout, "Wait, why are you doing this? Where are we going? I thought we were going to be discussing-"

"Dude, just relax! You'll be safe in the Cookie Jar with everyone else."

" _The Cookie Jar?!_ Why the hell are you taking me there?"

"Well, it's safe, dude."

"I… I suppose it is, but you need to listen to me – you can't just throw me in there! I've got important business with y-"

"Sorry," said Gideon, "But that can wait 'til later! Soos, any chance of hurrying this up?"

"We'll never get through this crowd, dude, not without getting caught up in it!"

"Then just throw him in!"

"Wait, WHAT?"

And before the Axolotl could so much as raise another word, Soos flung him through the air straight into the depths of the oncoming crowd; pacified by Gideon's mental power, they caught him by the arms and dragged him along in a humiliating frog-march down the street. Ahead, the portal loomed over him, growing steadily closer with every passing second.

In the end, all he could do was scream desperately at Soos and Gideon, trying vainly to make himself heard over the thunder of distant explosions – without much success. "Please!" he shouted. "I'm here to help you! I was supposed to help you stop Bill Cipher! For god's sakes, _why won't you listen to me?!"_

And then the portal swallowed him, and his screams were lost in a mad, kaleidoscopic tumble through reality.

A moment later, he was in the Cookie Jar.

Landing with a soft thud upon a lush green lawn, he looked around to find himself surrounded on all sides by rank after rank of near-identical suburban houses, their gleaming whitewashed walls aglow in the unearthly midday sun. Roads and pathways stretched outwards unto infinity from a central crossroads, every thoroughfare flanked by more and more houses, each one a cell for the unfortunate few incarcerated here – and the fortunate many who were being sent here. Signposts provided helpful guidelines for the residents: mealtimes, possible sources of entertainment, reassurances, maps, and reminders that violence was impossible here. Under other circumstances, this might have looked like someone's idea of paradise, but even Bill couldn't quite bring himself to build something so orderly without adding a few tiny notes of dysfunction into the mix: the sky was always grey here, grey and swirling with clouds that shifted into unnatural shapes; the roadways seemed perfectly solid from a distance, but seemed to shift and crack underfoot like the ice of a frozen lake; the houses always seemed ever-so-slightly asymmetrical, the shapes conforming to versions of geometry that didn't quite mesh with the human brain – each one a tiny signal informing the populace of the Cookie Jar that something was ever-so-slightly wrong.

This masterpiece of subtle parody, this mocking portrait of order and perfection, was already being occupied by several hundred thousand bewildered-looking civilians, many of them frantically seeking out answers from the residents – most of whom were already creeping out of their houses to investigate the commotion. A few of the new arrivals were even looking curiously optimistic at their surroundings, totally unaware that this vision of suburban tranquillity was Bill Cipher's personal pet hate made flesh, to be inflicted on those too boring to deserve immediate torture.

They would be safe here, yes. All their needs would be provided for, and all their injuries would be negated long before they happened; they might even be comfortable from time to time… but they would never be at home here.

Meanwhile, Axolotl came to two very important realizations at once: first, his powers seemed much less restricted here, his true nature a little freer than it ever had been in any other region of Bill's kingdom. True, he wasn't capable of the true, reality-spanning scope of his usual power, but he was much stronger than ever before.

Secondly, even with his newfound strength, there was no way in hell he'd be able to get out of here: the portal was still crowded with a vast stream of new arrivals, _and_ a good fifty feet off the ground for good measure. Even if Axolotl had been able to levitate under the current circumstances, he'd never be able to get past that crowd.

Sighing furiously, he reached for his phone, fully intent on giving Nyarlathotep a piece of his mind… but when he looked up, he found the man himself standing before him, grinning wider than ever. And as much as he'd have liked to unleash his fury on him right then and there, his powers were still chained; he'd have been no match for the son of Azathoth.

"Something wrong?" said the trickster.

"Just what the hell are you doing?" Axolotl demanded. "What happened to the plan for a rendezvous? We're supposed to be giving the zodiac a pep-talk on their next plan of attack!"

"Oh, the pep-talk happened _days_ ago. The work has been done for you, and the zodiac know what they have to do if they want to free their world from Cipher's reign: a comprehensive campaign of whittling away at Bill's forces and eroding his defences until they can at last stage a glorious raid on the Fearamid itself, where they can at last destroy the runes keeping you at bay, and allow you to bring down divine justice on the head of Bill! Axolotl victorious, with the help of the zodiac, exactly as you wanted."

"Then what am I doing here?"

"Well, I hate to say it, Axolotl, but if you're going to be bringing any divine justice on Bill's head, you're going to have to play it a lot safer than you have been. I mean, you and Tyler here have had some _really_ rough days since you began this little mission of yours… and this is, after all, the safest place in the world right now."

"You're locking me up _for my own protection?"_

"Only for a little while. Believe me, with the way I'm guiding the zodiac, they'll have you out again in a jiffy."

Axolotl groaned, massaging Tyler's temples in irritation. "So now you've taken over the entire plan. Brilliant, Nyarlathotep, simply brilliant. How could we have ever survived without you? Have you gone completely mad?!"

"Come now, Axolotl. You know that conventional notions of sanity matter little to Outer Gods such as myself."

"Stop being so flippant! You spent the last few months – or years, or centuries or millennia or however long it's been in objective time – gathering up an entire auxiliary army of gods and devils. You told me that they're up there right now, watching us: do you really think the likes of the Doctor, the Ellimist, the Luteces, Elizabeth, _and_ the redemptionverse folk are going to just let you take over the entire plan?"

"Of course not," said Nyarlathotep smugly. "In fact, I'd expect they'd be quite upset… if only they could see what's going on. Unfortunately, our little backup team is a little bit preoccupied by a new arrival in their midst. I admit, this one took a bit of careful timing, but at last I have the perfect distraction."

"A distraction?" Axolotl echoed.

The grin on his the Outer God's slowly refined itself to a malicious smirk. "One that goes by the name of Rick Sanchez…"

"Oh damn _._ "

"Oh damn indeed, Axolotl. Eris and the Golden Apples have nothing on the living force of bitterness and alcoholic discontent that _is_ Rick Sanchez. Suffice to say, everyone will still be alive by the time the brawl comes to an end, but by the time they take a good look at what's been happening down here, you'll be mysteriously absent. All the more incentive for them to follow my lead, I think."

Axolotl very gently sank to the ground and put his head in his hands. "Why?" he groaned wearily. "Why in the name of sanity would this even occur to you?"

"What, the Rick Sanchez business?"

"No, you idiot! I mean this entire debacle! What prompted you to have me sealed in here when the zodiac need my guidance? Why would you imagine that locking me up in here would be a good idea?"

Nyarlathotep gave Axolotl a look of almost paternal condescension. "Well, I hate to say it, my dear Axolotl, but… I just don't trust you."

"WHAT?!"

"You heard me: I don't trust you. You've made too many mistakes, allowed Bill to get away with too much for far too long. Believe me, when this is all over and done with, you're going to have a lot of trouble explaining your failures to the zodiac. I mean, I can almost excuse the first time: Bill was young and you didn't know him too well, so nobody would blame you for failing to catch him, especially after he escaped back into the Nightmare Realm. Beyond your reach. Nobody would blame you for that slip-up… but the _second,_ Axolotl, the second is where the zodiac would lynch you if they ever knew the truth."

" _That wasn't my fault!"_ Axolotl roared. "I'm bound by rules, remember? They are part of my body, part of my brain, and I am magically forced to follow them: I have no choice in the matter. I can't ignore these directives any more than you can ignore a command from Azathoth. If the condemned invokes my name, I am compelled to grant him the conditions of mercy. I didn't know Bill wasn't planning on abiding by the terms of our contract, and I definitely didn't know he was going to use my power to leapfrog backwards in time."

"And yet, he did. Again, your first time was a mistake, but your second time looks uncannily like incompetence."

"Look, the deal worked perfectly well in every other dimension it occurred in! Other iterations of Bill Cipher are in the process of being reformed – _have_ reformed! They have changed for the better!"

"Yes, yes," sneered Nyarlathotep. "I know all about the heartwarming new lives you and your counterparts have given Bill's iterations across the multiverse… but the fact is, you screwed up this time around. Simple as that."

"But that's no reason to-"

"It's not just your judgement I find questionable either, Axolotl. It's your approach to this venture in its entirety. You see, you take too many risks, endanger yourself on a near-constant basis, and all too often, you end up either facing down an enemy you cannot defeat alone or slumped in the gutter with your life's blood slowly draining away before your eyes. I can't in good conscience allow you to roam free, not when you owe me several very important favours."

"In other words, Charlie Bucket, you're having me locked away for my own protection so you won't lose your golden ticket."

"Of course. You're the goose that lays the golden eggs, Axolotl. I'm not going to let the cooks turn you into foie gras, not when you've got plenty of golden eggs yet to provide."

"Yeah. Goose would be about right at this point."

"Aw, don't be so hard on yourself, Axolotl. You have a very important role to play here in the Cookie Jar. Why do you think I led you to a safehouse where your powers are far more effective than any other location in Bill's kingdom? Why do you think you're sharing this space with so many thousands of people?"

Tyler Cutebiker's brow wrinkled. "You're making me a defender of these people?" said Axolotl.

"Quite so. After all, Bill might not visit… but I can't say the same for the Henchmaniacs. The refugees settling need defending, especially the original prisoners: there's people here that could destroy the zodiac's resolve if they were ever captured or killed. Here, you have the power to protect them. Here, they will benefit from the loosening of your metaphysical shackles."

"Nice. The only way you could loosen my shackles was by sending me to prison. Very, very cute."

Nyarlathotep chuckled indulgently, and checked his watch. "Great Azathoth, is that the time already? I'm needed elsewhere. You should be settled in pretty shortly, although I wouldn't recommend staying out on the streets – the zodiac have several billion people to rescue and store here, and they're going to take up a lot of space on the street. Rest assured, we'll see each other again very soon when the zodiac finally free you! Bye for now!"

He turned to leave, but at the last minute, he paused and added, "Oh, and do say hello to Dipper and Mabel's parents for me will you? They're living just down the street."

And then he was gone…

…leaving Axolotl well and truly trapped in the Cookie Jar.

* * *

 **A/N:** This chapter's soundtrack choice is **Shimmy She Wobble,** by Othar Turner and the Rising Star Fife. Well, I thought it'd be an appropriate choice for this Misfit Mobilization Moment...

Up next…

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